


staying by the water

by megancrtr



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-10-03 23:07:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17293127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megancrtr/pseuds/megancrtr
Summary: Every summer, Jack goes north to Nominingue, casting out lines in the water. One day, he catches something, but it's not quite a fish.





	1. swim dates

**Author's Note:**

> idk something sweet and silly with fantastical undertones (overtones?). all chapters are written and will be posted on Thursdays from here on out. hope you enjoy!

The Zimmermanns always had a cabin up by the lakes in Nominingue, the town enough removed from everything that it meant anonymity, which first Alicia, and then Jack, came to crave. 

When the roads are open, the cabin is only a four hour drive from Quebec. It’s an easy drive, straight up 117 to 321, and one the Zimmermanns have memorized.

Five kilometers from Nominingue, the cabin sits right on the western bank of Lake of Great Bays, away from the almost nonexistent traffic of 321.

In the summer when the roads are always open, the tiny town swells to maybe 2,000.

Jack knows a lot of locals by their faces, but he couldn’t put names to anyone, couldn’t say where any resident lived. And for Jack, that’s perfect. He doesn’t need to know where the cashier at the single grocery store sleeps and who the only employee of the gas station hangs out with.

Jack only needs to stock up on food, fix up his boat, put out a fishing line, and spend the day slathered in sunscreen and in the sun.

Jack gets his wish for the peace and quiet of the cabin earlier than he would like this year, the Falconers bounced early from the playoffs. At least they made it, though. Jack hadn’t been very optimistic about their chances toward the end of the season. They’d battled hard for the wild card spot, but the first team they faced in the playoffs outscored them every game. 

Jack stops by Mom and Dad’s after locker clean out to pack up the pickup. He loads it with everything he won’t be able to get out there, namely protein powder and American sweets his teammates got him hooked on. His dad makes him promise to take out the boat for fishing, even though both of them have yet to catch anything in the lake, and his mom makes him promise to never, ever forget the sunscreen. She gives him a meaningful look, and Jack tries not to remember the horror of being a peeling lobster for all of his first NHL pre-season.

Then Jack’s off.

The drive is as easy as it always is, and Jack sings along to the radio until static garbles every other note. He switches over to a history book, WWII gunnery and weapons, for the final two hours of the drive.

When Jack arrives at the cabin, the sun is only just beginning to arc below the trees. It sets the lake alight in a soft, golden light, and Jack grabs his camera and heads around to the back of the cabin, to the edge of Lake of Great Bays. He’ll unload later, probably with the flashlight on his phone, but it’ll be fine. He doesn’t get sunsets like these in Providence. He misses them, can’t get enough of them.

Jack snaps a picture with a fish jumping out of the lake, a rosy-golden glow backlighting the trees, and the sliver of the moon barely rising above it all. It takes a minute to transfer the photo to his phone. He sends it off to his parents, signal strong in the cloudless sky, and then hesitates only a moment before messaging it to Tater, too.

Jack goes back to the truck, swinging out his duffle and hauling out his suitcase. He stomps up the front porch steps, and he twists the door open, no need to lock anything up here. Jack smiles as the musty smell of unused cabin hits him, the smell of wood slipping from the walls, and welcoming him home. 

Jack flips on the lights as he goes: from the cramped entrance way, to the kitchen with it’s view of the lake, to the family room with one couch and two recliners. He pauses for a moment to open the back porch door, letting in the sounds and smells of the lake, almost forgetting to roll the screen door into place to keep the worst of the bugs out. 

The bedroom looks the same as it ever has. The single queen-sized bed. The nightstands bracketing the headboard. The small entertainment system dusty with lack of use. Jack dumps the duffle onto the bed and parks the suitcase. He muscles the window above each night stand, cool air soaring in, sweeping around the room, batting at the curtains. Crickets sing into the night, and Jack grins, counting the crips, estimating the temperature the way his parents taught him. Jack draws in a deep breath, fresh air filling up his lungs, driving out the scent of locked up cabin. 

 

Dinner is pasta and frozen vegetables, the night air sweeping around the cabin, chilly enough Jack dug out a sweatshirt. His phone beeps halfway through his meal, and Tater’s responded from Russia with a photo of his own: an alarm clock reading 8:32 a.m. Too early, Tater follows up with as if Jack doesn’t know Tater considers everything before noon too early.

Jack moves outside after finishing, a wine glass in his hand, a few fish jumping until the lake settles down for the evening. Jack switches on the deck light above his head and pulls out his WWII book. Crickets chirp, a few moths run into Jack’s reading light. All is quiet.

 

Jack settles into a routine quickly after his first day there. He wakes early, before the sun rises, and goes for a run broken by interval sprinting. After that, it’s time for breakfast, and then a swim in the lake. Jack towels off and then works out. The routine varies there, because it has to, but usually by around 11, Jack’s showered and walking down to the only grocery store in town for whatever ingredients he needs for lunch and dinner. He cooks lunch, preps dinner, and then goes out in the lake on the boat.

Though the boat is small, it can comfortably hold three people, the exact number the Zimmermann family needs. The boat has a little motor that can maybe get up to 20 kph, but Jack’s never in any rush while out boating. He takes his time threading his fishing line with a lure, and then he casts it out.

By about five, Jack heads back to the shore, having caught not a single fish, though teased by one or two bites.

Jack eats around 7, before going for a short workout again. He eats something again afterward, and then he rinses off before settling on the deck to read a chapter or two, feet propped up on an ottoman and a gentle breeze coming off the lake, keeping the worst of the bugs away.

It’s in this way that Jack spends his summer until, abruptly, it isn’t.

 

Jack’s minding his own business, the way he always does, when something large flops out in the lake. Startled, Jack jerks his head up from his book, and he squints into the dim moonlight. Jack catches sight of the ripples, large and definitely not something a fish would make. At least, no fish in the Lake of Great Bays.

Jack puts down his book, picks up his flashlight, and goes to his boat tied up at the small dock. The boat shakes a little as the ripples hit it, and Jack puts his flashlight in his mouth while he undoes the ropes.

It takes him a while to coast out to where the splash happened, equipped only with the small motor he has. Jack peers into the water first with his naked eye, and then with the flashlight. The water is stirred up, too murky to really see. Jack squints a bit, thinking he catches sight of movement, but when Jack moves the flashlight around a little to get a better look, there’s nothing to see.

Jack huffs and shuts off the flashlight, the moon really enough to guide him back to his cabin.

“Sorry about the splash!”

Jack whips his head around, and he can just barely make out a head bobbing on top of the water.

“Didn’t mean to disturb you,” the floating head continues. 

Jack fumbles around for his flashlight and flicks it on, pointing it straight at the blonde guy in the water.

“Oi!” The guy ducks underwater and then pops up a meter to the left of Jack’s flashlight. “You could blind someone with that.”

“Sorry,” Jack blurts out automatically, but he shines the light on the head again.

The guy snaps his eyes shut. “What the fuck? I just said be careful with that!”

Jack clicks the flashlight off. “Sorry, really.” Jack laughs a little, nervous. “Don’t normally get anyone swimming in the lake this late at night. I’ll just,” Jack waves a little helplessly with his hand, “leave you to it then.” He starts turning the boat around. 

Pale hands latch onto the side of his boat.

Jack yelps and almost topples over from his seated position. The guy rests his chin on the rim of the boat. “Name’s Kent,” the guy says. “Kent Parson.”

“Jack,” Jack blurts out without truly meaning to. Kent just looks at him, and in the moonlight, Jack finds himself trying to find the color of Kent’s irises, small slivers surrounding blown pupils. Like a cat, soaking in more light than Jack could ever imagine. His eyes might be blue, or green, maybe a murky aqua or— 

“I’ve got to go. But... I’ll see you around then?” Kent asks. “I like this section of the lake.”

“I,” Jack stumbles over his words, a bit at a loss of what exactly to say. “Sure. Yes, I’ll see you around.”

The guy, Kent, grins. He lets go of the side of the boat. Water crests over him. Jack waits around, expecting to see Kent pop up only a few meters later for a breath of air, but he doesn’t. Jack frowns, peers over the side of the boat and sees only still churning water. Jack doesn’t move the boat for a few more seconds. 

Jack doesn’t see Kent again. He must’ve simply missed Kent coming up for air, Jack rationalizes, misjudged how far and how fast he could swim. Looked in the wrong section of the lake at the wrong time. There was a lot of lake for Jack to misjudge.

With the moon now a fair bit higher than it normally is when Jack goes to sleep, Jack turns the boat around and goes back to his cabin.

Jack lays awake in bed, tossing and turning. He hasn’t seen Kent before, and even though Jack doesn’t know everything about the locals, he knows them. He can recognize who works where and notices when a sibling takes over for a day. Jack also knows the summer locals, like him, who spend their time fishing, boating, and swimming. Kent, as far as Jack knows, fits into neither group, making Kent someone new, who hasn’t been to the lake before.

Maybe, Jack thinks, he can show Kent around, introduce him to the least buggy bays, best smelling sections of the lake, and the clearest areas to swim in. Jack never felt lonely in Nominingue before, but lying in bed, surrounded only by his own thoughts and a few moths that made it inside the cabin, Jack feels sort of isolated.

The next morning, Jack tries his best to stick to his schedule. Routine ensures Jack will be prepared for hockey in September.

Jack makes it through everything he needs to do, but during his run, he keeps glancing out at the lake. When eating breakfast, Jack does so out on his porch, even though he normally eats it inside. Even when swimming, Jack keeps pausing for moments to survey the water around him. Afterall, Kent did say he liked this section of the lake.

When Jack doesn’t see Kent that morning, he sternly pushes down his unrealistic disappointment, telling himself Kent could simply be a late riser. He was out swimming fairly late last night, so it only makes sense that he doesn’t get up until noon or later.

With those thoughts, Jack walks down to buy his groceries, preps for his next meals, and then goes out on the lake with his boat. Jack strings up his lure, sets up the fishing pole, and expects to spend the next few hours with his head in his book. Jack doesn’t get very many pages in when his pole starts jerking.

Jack, astonished, starts to reel in the line. Only to find nothing at the end. Frowning, Jack casts the line again. Three pages later, Jack goes through the same phenomenon. Then again, four more pages in. Frustrated by the teasing fish and the lack of headway in his book, Jack decides he needs to stop fishing or stop reading. Choosing the former, Jack reels up the line and slots the pole into the side of the boat.

Satisfied, Jack cracks open his book again, drifting slowly around the lake. When Jack finds himself squinting to read, he jerks his head up in the fading light and hurriedly turns the rudder for the shore. As he putters back the dozen meters, the sun continues setting, lighting the water and trees aglow in a breathtaking, rosey light. Jack’s breath catches, and he wants that image. Wants the way the light hits the still water and some geese basking toward the center, and the starlings taking flight in the soft-colored sky. 

Jack hurries into the cabin once he makes landfall, barely tying up his boat, before he clamors back into it with his camera. Ignoring his growling stomach in favor of the perfect light, Jack pushes off from shore and sails back out to where he can catch the trees’ reflections in the glassy lake. But then the photos start getting darker, and darker, and Jack finds himself in almost complete blackness. The sun sunk below the treeline and the moon not yet risen.

Jack scowls at himself, for being stupid, but figures he can simply wait for the moon to rise high enough before heading back. It should only be an hour or so. Only a few minutes in, Jack’s stomach growls and his muscles start to itch, anticipating an evening workout. Anticipating his carefully crafted routine. Jack looks out of the lake. He should go swimming; his body needs to get back into tip-top shape. Jack should strip down to his boxers and swim until the moon rises enough to illuminate the shore bank.

So Jack does, plunging into the water in a less than elegant dive. It gets the job done though, and after the initial few shiverings, the rush of cold water rocketing his breath from his body, Jack’s swimming. He checks up on the boat and its position every few minutes, staying within a few easy strokes of it, but otherwise he starts moving through his evening workout, needing to stay warm.

“He swims!”

Jack snaps his head around in the water, and when his frantic splashes dies down, a meter or so from Jack is Kent, effortlessly keeping his own head above water, pupils blown wide. “Hi,” Jack blurts, and then he doesn’t know quite what else to say.

“Little late for you to be out swimming, isn’t it?”

Jack tries to shrug in the water and finds the movement doesn’t really work. “I guess,” he finally settles on. “It’s colder than I like.”

Kent laughs, and he ducks under the water. In moments, he emerges a few centimeters from Jack’s face. Jack jerks in surprise, and Kent disappears under again, popping up about a meter away again with a laugh. “You’re a bit jumpy, aren’t you.”

Jack chuckles to cover how uncomfortable he is, out in his boxers, in the middle of the lake, with someone he doesn’t know bobbing closer. Jack starts stroking toward his boat. “Not used to others out here. Come to the lake for peace and quiet.”

Kent hums. He matches Jack’s movements, until Kent hangs onto the boat right next to Jack. “Hope you don’t mind my company then. Not really into peace and quiet.”

Jack means to say he does mind, but find himself smiling instead. Finding out he sort of likes having Kent’s company, however brief and unexpected. “That’s fine.” Then Jack inexplicably asks, “Want to come back to mine?” Kent’s face takes on a wolfish grin. Jack quickly backtracks over what he said, flushing dark in horror. “I meant, for a nice cup of coffee! Something hot, you know. Since the lake is cold. I thought it would be nice. Not…” Jack swallows down the rest of his words: Not so that I could make a move on you. 

For a few agonizing seconds, Jack thinks he destroyed whatever tiny friendship couldn’t bloomed between them. Then Kent goes, “That sounds great.” Jack’s heart soars. Kent continues, “But I can’t tonight. Another night.”

Jack hurriedly stuffs down the little flutter of irrational hope that peeked its head at, “Another night.” “Right,” Jack says. “Whenever you’re free then, I guess. I’m, you know, sort of just hanging out around here.” Jack winces, and then plans on heaving himself back into the boat to save himself from having to say something else. But Jack flounders when he realizes he’s only wearing boxers. How uncomfortable. Kent unintentionally rescues him.

“I’ll let you know,” Kent says, and then smiles. Jack does a double-take, his teeth look almost a little sharp, but—Jack looks again as Kent continues, and his teeth look fine. Just a trick of the light. “See you around. Swim together next time? You’ve got a good stroke.”

Jack opens his mouth to answer Kent, but the guy is already gone, submerged under the water. Jack waits a few moments in case Kent’s preparing to pop up and startle him, like the first night. But Kent doesn’t, so Jack Jack hauls himself into the boat. He shivers for a bit in the cold, considers shucking off his boxers and simply pulling on his dry shorts. Jack does so not long after, because Kent is long gone, no one else is on the lake, and Jack doesn’t want to boat home cold.

Jack brews a nice hot cup of coffee once he gets back, actively choosing to forego his actual workout for the night and put an extra one in tomorrow morning. Jack drinks the coffee on the deck, porch light on and book open in his lap. Jack stubbornly makes it through two pages before giving up. He watches the lake as he finished his coffee, but doesn’t catch sight of Kent.

The next day, Jack goes through a longer, harder morning workout, which forces him to move his swim back later. Maybe not all the way to right before dusk, but somehow that’s where Jack ends up sticking it in, right after his day of boating.

Jack is prepared for the evening workout, swim trunks on and a towel inside the boat. When the sun starts to set, Jack hops over the side. 

Jack checks on the boat every few laps, and eventually Jack admits to himself he’s checking for Kent, too. Meeting twice is coincidence, but three time would be a pattern, and so Jack hopes he’ll see Kent a third time. Jack hasn’t yet offered to show Kent around the lake yet, which he probably should’ve started with instead of inviting Kent back to his cabin. Lesson learned.

Arms and legs worked to exhaustion, no Kent in sight, Jack pulls himself back into the boat, wraps his towel around his shoulders, and turns the motor on.

“Hey! Where you going? The night is young.”

Jack flips the motor off and about falls overboard to find Kent on the side of his boat, pale-white forearms lying flat on the wood and his chin on top of them. “You swim very quickly,” Jack observes, giving himself a moment to get his racing heart under control. Kent just smiles, tilting his head to one side and looking up at Jack. “Um,” Jack says, and then runs an unconscious hand through his hair. “It’s about my bedtime.”

“Too early for bedtime,” Kent counters, and there’s an off sound behind Kent’s words. Like… like clicks, made from the far back of his throat, dropping behind each word. Kent slides off the side of the boat. He pops up not a moment later in the same position on the other side. “Stay out a bit later.”

Jack bites his lip, looking back to the cabin. He would, he just. He’s pretty tired. “Tomorrow?” Kent’s smile fades a little, closing over teeth Jack could’ve sworn were too sharp for a moment. Jack hurries on, “Actually tomorrow. I need some caffeine to stay up this late all the time.” Kent perks up, and Jack can’t help stumbling over even more words as if that will improve Kent’s expression even further, “Do you want to meet at a certain time? We could meet at my cabin, and I could—”

“I like finding you in the water,” Kent says. Kent’s words with their clicks make Jack flush, even though he’s not exactly sure why. “Let’s say… Let’s say at dusk. That’s a little early for me, but I think I can make it.”

“Yeah?” Jack asks.

“Yeah. I’ll see you then. Be ready to swim, I’ll want to race.” Kent drops off the side of the boat, and Jack doesn’t bother looking around for Kent, already knowing he wouldn’t find him. Jack can’t help the wide grin breaking across his face though. He has a date tomorrow. Sort of. A friend date. A swimming date.

 

Jack wakes up earlier than he wants to, considering he plans to stay up late talking to Kent. Jack goes through his routine, which now includes a more intense morning workout and a less intense afternoon one, before nixing his afternoon boat ride. He spends his time instead reading on the porch, since he doesn’t expect to read tonight, and has an earlier dinner. Jack definitely does not want his stomach growling while in the lake.

Jack isn’t positive when dusk is, but he goes out when the sun starts setting, motoring to the area not far from his cabin Kent swims to. He doesn’t wait long before Kent announces himself with a large splash, utterly soaking Jack and his dry towel.

Jack doesn’t hesitate before throwing himself over the side of the boat, planning to retaliate. He can’t seem to splash Kent though. Kent ducks out of the way or under the water always a hair too fast, before exploding out of the water from an unexpected angle. Jack sputters more lake water that night than he has in a long time.

When Jack’s legs start to drag, he goes back to the boat. He gets inside and tries to curl up in the previously soaked towel. It helps a little, at least keeping away the worst of the night breeze. “Why don’t you come up, too?” Jack asks. “I can take you to your cabin.”

“I’m good,” Kent says, head bobbing less than a meter from the boat. “I can do this all night.”

Jack shakes his head and finds himself still smiling. “More power to you. I’m beat though.”

“Let’s talk for a while then,” Kent says, voice taking on the odd lit, and he swims closer to the boat, powerful arms cutting easily through the water. He latches onto the side with his fingers, almost glowing with their whiteness, before pulling himself up to rest his forearms on the ledge. Jack has come to think of this pose as Kent’s resting position.

“Want to get in the boat?” Jack offers again, and Kent shakes his head.

“Warmer in the water. Besides, if I get in, I won’t want to leave.” Kent winks, and Jack is glad it’s too dark for Kent to see him turn bright red.

“If you insist,” Jack says.

“I do,” Kent agrees, and then asks what Jack’s doing out here. “Getting away from the hustle and bustle or can’t give up the beauty of this place?”

Jack pauses for a moment. “Both,” he finally says. “I’m kind of celebrity,” Jack admits, and then immediately flushes because of how it sounds.

Kent sputters out laughter. “Oh? I can’t say I’ve heard of you at all, hot shot celebrity. What films do you suggest I watch to become familiar with your work?”

“I play hockey,” Jack says. “Ice hockey.”

“I suppose you have the physik for it. And pardon my French,” Kent says, “but your ass is fine as fuck.”

If Jack turns any redder, he’s going to simply melt into a puddle.

“You use it well. Wouldn’t have guessed you’d be able to swim so well.”

“I like swimming,” Jack defends.

“That was a compliment,” Kent says. “So, hockey player, you get tired of all the fame and fortune, and come out here for a little peace and quiet?” Jack nods, and Kent tilts his head to better look up at Jack. “Cool.”

“What do you do?” Jack asks.

“Hm?”

“I asked what you do,” Jack says. “Now that you know about me.”

“I’m not some cool celebrity,” Kent responds with a laugh. “Tell me more about you. I need some details so I can brag about knowing you to friends. You look well-loved. Where’s your family? Too loud and rambunctious for your quiet time?”

Jack starts talking about his mom and dad, and somehow he can’t stop. He launches into story after story about them, who they are, what they like, his favorite memories of them, and before long, Jack finds himself yawning. He apologises profusely, “This is way later than I’m normally up.”

Kent apologies in return, “Didn’t mean to keep you up past your bedtime.” Jack raises his eyebrows at Kent as he maneuvers back to the motor. “Okay,” Kent admits. “I was totally aiming for it.”

“Thanks for talking,” Jack says. “I really—it’s been a while since I’ve opened up like that.”

Kent grins and raps the wood of the boat with his knuckles. “Hope to talk more again.”

“Tomorrow?” Jack asks hopefully, but Kent shakes his head.

“Can’t tomorrow, day after?”

Jack nods, and they part ways. Kent dives under the water in a single, fluid motion, and Jack tries to spot him coming up for air all the way back to his cabin, but he never does.

Jack miraculously finds enough energy to haul himself into a quick shower before collapsing in his bed. The sheets are warm and cozy, and Jack can’t help imagining how much better they would be if he had someone to share them with. Jack’s mind flashes to Kent and his strong forearms. Jack squeezes his eyes tighter. He’s spoken with Kent less than a dozen times, and Kent didn’t seem interested at all in coming back to Jack’s cabin, with or without any unintended connotations about his invite. Jack still falls asleep with a smile on his face, though.

Jack tries to spend his next day normally. He tries to focus on working out. He tries to focus on cooking. He tries to focus on boating or reading or listening to an an audiobook or taking pictures, but Kent keeps interrupting everything Jack tries to do. Jack tries to read about survival tactics of the Russians in winter, and Kent slides into his mind, talking about how the water isn’t that cold. Jack tries to cook (store-bought) fish for dinner, and Kent swims to mind.

Jack gives up on every activity earlier than he normally would. It leads to him crawling into bed earlier than anticipated. He almost stays up until his normal bedtime on principle, but then a sneaky voice tells Jack, “The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you’ll wake up and see Kent,” which is logic Jack would usually ignore. However, Jack hasn’t been quite usual the past few days, so he tugs the blanket up to his chin and stubbornly closes his eyes until sleep takes over.

Jack punishes himself for yesterday’s transgressions by putting himself through a grueling workout. When he finishes, Jack’s entire body aches, particularly his glutes, which he spends extra time rolling out, before staggering around the kitchen to make lunch. He scarfs it down and then collapses on the bed, not even rinsed from his sweat. Jack knows he’ll regret it when he wakes up, but Jack can’t bring himself to move before dropping off into a well-deserved though unexpected nap.

From the afternoon into early evening, Jack makes it through a few pages in his book while drifting in the boat. Before the sun even starts setting, Jack changes distraction tactics and starts sending pictures to his parents: a bird on the water, the few clouds in the blue sky, their cabin from the lake.

His mom calls, and Jack lays down in the boat to stare at the sky. “Your pictures are beautiful,” Alicia starts with, and it quirks a smile onto Jack’s face. “We’ve been having some dreadful weather here, rain for days. This last storm went just south of you, but I saw on the news another is moving in. Stocked up on food?”

“Always,” Jack says, and Alicia hums her approval. Jack waits and a few moments later, his mom starts filling him on the extended-hockey-family events he’s missed. A few “uncles” have had kids and one started dating someone new. “That’s good,” Jack says as the sky starts to darken, dusk on the horizon. “Thanks for talking,” Jack says in goodbye.

“Love you,” Alicia says, and Jack dutifully says it back. When Jack ends the call, looking away from the dark blue sky, Kent’s hanging on the side of the boat.

“Cute,” he says. “That your girlfriend?”

Jack laughs and sits up. “My mom.”

“So you want to race today? Doesn’t look like you’ve been in the water at all yet.”

Jack doesn’t tell Kent how he worked out so hard he basically passed out. Instead, Jack pulls off his shirt and springs off the boat, going for a graceful dive but mostly achieving a belly flop. It stings, but it brings the added benefit of absolutely drenching Kent who hadn’t expected it in the least.

Kent sputters for a couple of seconds before pushing off from the boat. “You little sneak,” he admonishes Jack, and then he jets forward. “First to the edge of the bay wins!”

“Oh, I’m a sneak?” Jack shouts after Kent before doing his best to catch up. He loses by a landslide. Jack doesn’t mean to pout, but he must, because Kent flicks his nose.

“Sore loser,” Kent says.

Jack lunges for Kent, and like always, Kent slips away like an eel. Jack scowls. Kent grins, and they swim lazily back to the boat. “So what do you do?” Jack wants to know as he rolls ungracefully into the boat, his entire body aching the good ache.

“What do you mean?” Kent asks, taking up his position on the side of the boat. He ignores Jack’s attempt to wave him into it.

“Like,” Jack says, “what do you do for a living? You can’t possibly just swim out here all the time?”

Kent’s grin turns sly. “Can’t I?”

Jack rolls his eyes, and then shoves Kent off his little perch. Kent sputters and squacks, giving Jack an absolute stink eye. Jack’s lips tease upwards. The next thing Jack knows, he’s soaked in water and can’t stop laughing about his misfortune.

“So tomorrow?” Jack asks when he can barely keep his eyes open.

Kent shakes his head. “Storm’s coming. Not safe for you to be out in the water. When the weather’s good again, I’ll be back. Though might be a little later than normal. Waters always churn up a bit after the storm.”

Jack nods as if that makes sense. Kent smiles something sweet, teeth almost the same color of his skin, and before Jack can suggest they meet in his cabin during the storm, Kent says goodbye, slipping off the edge of the boat and into the murky waters. Jack leans over the boat, hoping to catch sight of Kent swimming below the surface. Jack is less than surprised when it looks like Kent already swam away. He’s a fast swimmer alright.

The next three days it storms. Jack stays inside for most of it, only braving the thunder and lightning when he absolutely needs to make a run to the grocery store. He arrives back to the cabin soaked through and miserable. It’s nothing a hot cup of coffee and a warm shower can’t fix. So Jack goes about both before stretching out on the couch in the living room with his book, windows open. As he reads, he listens to the rain falling on his roof, trees, the lake.

When the storm finally passes and the lake is calm enough for Jack to boat out on it, Jack grins and heads on out. He watches the sun edge down the sky. Kent greets him with a friendly, light splash, and Jack catapults over the side in retaliation.

They play an elaborate game of keep away most of the evening, Kent effectively winning, evading Jack’s every move. “Slippery as an eel,” Jack says.

Kent spits in the water. “Fucking hate eels.”

Jack laughs in response, batting away the water where Kent spat. Jack doesn’t really have strong opinions about eels. “Why’s that?”

“Stringy bastards,” Kent says. “But enough about eels, tell me about your favorite food. Is it peanut butter? You look like a peanut butter kind of guy.”

“How did you know?”

Kent shrugs with a smug expression on his face. “I’m fantastic, that’s how.”

“Well it’s actually PB&J—”

Kent interrupts with a gleeful laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Yes?”

“You are so boring,” Kent says enthusiastically. Jack almost takes offense, but Kent’s eyes are shining in the moonlight. The rims of his irises are a dancing midnight blue. “Want to know what my favorite food is?”

“What?” Jack asks, finding that he desperately wants to know. In comparison to what Kent must know about Jack, Jack knows very little about Kent.

“Fucking not PB&J is what.”

Jack gives Kent his best unimpressed look. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a little shit?”

“Are you only now realizing it?” Kent asks, and then drops exactly like a stone in water as Jack lunges for him.

The days on the lake pass by quickly, like they always do, but time speeds up the nights Jack can hang out with Kent, who continues to elude any invitation Jack gives him to come back to the cabin, irregardless of how non-salacious Jack makes the offer. It almost becomes a game, the excuses Kent comes up with becoming more and more hilarious including, “I’m a mermaid, can’t leave the water.” Jack laughs himself silly, trying to imagine Kent with a fucking tail for legs.

Jack’s last night at the cabin, he rows out to his and Kent’s spot in the lake. Kent’s already there, floating in the water and head tilted back to the sky. “You look pensive,” Jack says in greeting, and Kent shrugs. He takes up his place on the boat.

“What’s up?” Kent asks when Jack doesn’t immediately jump into the water.

Jack hesitates a moment. “I was wondering if you want to grab a coffee tonight or something.”

Kent rolls his eyes. “Jack, I don’t—”

“It’s just that it’s my last night at Nominingue,” Jack rushes on, “and I thought it would be nice. To just have a coffee and talk when neither of us are treading water.”

Jack waits. Kent blinks a few times processing. “It’s your last night here?” Kent says.

“For the summer,” Jack says. “I have to go back for training camp and some media obligations and my mom and dad want to hang out for a bit, and.” Jack clamps his mouth shut, realizing rambling when he hears it. Kent doesn’t say anything else, and Jack says, “Do you have a number or something? I’d like to text you, if that’s okay?”

Kent looks away from Jack and his arms slip from the side of the boat. “No,” Kent says, “no, I don’t have a number you can reach me at.”

“Oh,” Jack says softly. Kent’s rejection hits him hard. Just a summer-friendship fling then. That’s fine. Jack swallows around the sudden obstruction in his throat. “That’s, well. Okay.” Neither of them say anything. Jack finds himself blinking rapidly to ward off tears. Clinging to a last shred of hope, Jack asks, “Are you going to be here next summer?”

Kent glances back at Jack for one, single moment. Pupils still wide, the edges of his eyes are a beautiful seaweed green in the fading sunlight. “Yeah,” Kent says, voice colored with a series of sharp clicks. "I guess." He slips beneath the water. Jack looks for Kent, but he doesn’t reappear.

Heart hurting, Jack turns his boat back toward the cabin where there’s nothing to occupy himself with. Jack already finished packing in anticipation of being too tired the next morning, planning to stay awake most of the night with Kent. The clean, packed-up rooms are hard to look at. Jack climbs straight into bed and clenches his eyes shut. It takes him a long time to fall asleep.


	2. fishing dates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the delay--work was a little hectic! hope you enjoy this next chapter :)

Jack and the Falconers come out flying at the start of the season, and they don’t stop. The season and its victories blur in Jack’s mind as he tallies a season high of five hat tricks, the second most points in the League, and more game winning goals than he can remember. First the Falconers win their division, then they win the conference, and then they win the Stanley Cup.

The following two days Jack barely remembers, plied with alcohol and good feelings and an astonishing lack of sleep. Jack sobers up for the start of the victory parade. He relapses with the rest of the team not even halfway through.

The next morning, nursing the hangover of all hangovers, Jack drags himself off the floor of Pelican’s house. He stumbles over G, accidentally kicks Nicky’s head, and finds Tater in the kitchen, slumped around a brewing pot of coffee. “There,” Tater says, pointing toward an already prepared travel mug. Jack wraps his hands around it and breathes in the caffeine desperately. “Go to lake,” Tater commands, straightening and turning toward Jack, “take pictures. Send photos of sunset, and I send photos of parties.”

“I don’t want photos of—”

Tater jerks Jack into a crushing hug. Jack shouts in pain, every ache the alcohol hid slamming back into existence, piping hot coffee spilling over his hand. Jack seizes back from Tater’s grasp as a survival instinct. “Tater—”

Tater latches onto Jack’s shoulders, staring uncomfortably at Jack. “I keep you from being recluse.”

“Yes,” Jack says in goodbye. He detangles himself from Tater’s grasp, clutching his coffee, head pounding and, now, entire body aching.

First stop is his truck.

Second stop is his apartment, where he tosses too many pieces of clothing into too many suitcases. No mental capacity to pack anything properly. It takes two trips to carry out all his luggage, and Jack’s certain he missed something.

Third stop is Nominingue, his cabin.

On the drive up, Jack can’t get comfortable, squinting into the sun and muscles twinging at every movement. He didn’t realize how much like complete shit he felt until he’s stuck with nothing to do. Every part of him aches, his body ran ragged the entire season. There’s a pinch in his hip flexor that needs to heal, a hairline fracture in his palm that needs rest, two toes with tendinitis that flare up regularly when he doesn’t use cruise control, and a sore as fuck jaw from when he got in that stupid ass fight.

The moment Jack pulls up to the cabin, he lets out a sigh of relief, keying off the engine. Peace. Quiet. Time to heal.

Jack lugs his suitcase and duffle bag inside, flicking on the cabin’s lights as he goes and breathing in the cabin air: musty, warm, welcoming. It doesn’t ease Jack’s headache or make his jaw suddenly stop aching, but the cabin and the stillness of the lake soothes everything else. He open the windows as he passes them, tension dropping from his body, his shoulders relaxing down. This is home. For the next few months at least. Which means Jack doesn’t need to worry about unpacking yet, he can take a shower, drop into bed, and sleep until—

Kent should be here.

Jack eyes flash out the big kitchen window, over the porch, to the lake.

Jack hadn’t—well, Jack told himself not to think about Kent because. With no way to contact Kent, there was no reason to think about him. Jack couldn’t send Kent photos Jack thought Kent would like. Couldn’t tell him stories. Couldn’t complain about the season. Jack thought about visiting in the winter, of course he had, but the drive was too far and too hard to make then, and Jack didn’t even know if Kent wintered here. All signs pointed to Kent wintering somewhere else, and—

It doesn’t matter. Jack tells himself firmly as he starts to make his way outside, doing his best to ignore his protesting body. He clatters down the porch steps and can’t quite reach his full stride as he makes for the dock. Jack starts to smile, remembering Kent’s perpetually unruly, soggy hair and moonlit pale skin and his eyes that morphed colors like the lake’s waters.

Jack pulls up short at the edge of the dock. The boat’s not here. He tucked it away at the end of last summer for the winter. And Jack can’t swim in his current injured state. Not right now. If he even had to make it two meters, he’d probably drown. Jack scowls. He looks around as if expecting a solution to present itself, and none does. Jack drops to the edge of the dock, pulling his legs up to his chest and looking out across the lake. It’ll have to be tomorrow then, Jack tells himself. Tomorrow, Jack will work on his routine until the sky turns toward dusk, and then he’ll head out in the boat to his and Kent’s spot.

Kent will splash him in greeting and, if he’s in a particularly good mood, yank Jack off the boat. Kent will light up at Jack’s undignified entrance into the water, giving Jack a smile all at once smug, proud, and endearing.

“Welcome back!”

Jack jerks his head up. Swimming above the water, arms arching in large effortless strokes, is Kent. Jack can’t help the smile bursting onto his face. Kent matches it. He bobs to a stop about half a meter from Jack.

“You look good,” Jack blurts out. Jack blushes, and then his heart flutters as he catches Kent’s cheeks reddening a little, too.

“So what are you doing out of the water you doofus?” Kent smacks his hands into the lake. The water doesn’t fly far enough to hit Jack. “Too good for us amphibious humans?”

Jack reaches down, keeping care to stay balanced on the dock, and splashes some water at Kent. Or tries to. Kent’s already over a few centimeters, just enough to be out of the way. He looks smug as fudge.

“Your aim and reaction time has slowed,” Kent teases, moving closer. Jack wants to reach out and grab him, haul him up onto the pier so they can talk properly, maybe lean into one another’s body heat. “What gives? Also, you’re late to summer.”

Jack snorts. “I’m not late.”

“Yes you are,” Kent says, crossing his arms over his chest, “summer started at least a month ago.”

“I…” Jack lets his sentence hang, squinting to get a better look at Kent in the dim lighting. “Are you pouting?”

“What? No!”

Jack laughs, full bodied and ecstatic. “You’re pouting!” Kent sputters a few sounds. “You missed me,” Jack says gloriously. “You missed me when I didn’t show up at the beginning of summer.”

“Of course I did you shit head,” Kent says, words laced with a touch of bite, a series of clicks. “You told me you’d be back for summer.”

Jack opens his mouth to respond, and then has nothing to say. It’s been over eight months since they last talked, no communication since then. And Kent was here when Jack returned. Not just in their spot, but by the cabin. Jack swallows. Did Kent hang around their meeting place for a while, before swimming closer and closer to the dock each night? How many more days before Kent would’ve given up? And then Jack wouldn’t have had any way to reach him, no idea where he lives or works. No idea where he’s even from. If Jack waited a few more days before driving up...

“We won the Stanley Cup,” Jack drops into the space between them like a peace offering, only crickets filling the silence. Kent drifts closer, and Jack explains more, “That’s why I was so late. Had to finish the playoff series.”

Kent holds his hand out for a fist bump, and Jack leans forward to bump it. He didn’t realize Kent was so close. “Nice,” Kent says. “You’re on the Falconers then?”

“Alternate Captain,” Jack says, chest puffing up only a bit, but enough for Kent to poke fun at him. Jack smiles easily, and Kent follows. They find their way back to the banter they had before.

When the moon reaches the other side of the lake, Kent pokes at Jack’s crossed legs. “So no swimming tonight.”

Jack shakes his head. “I’m injured,” he says. “Like, every part of me. Name a part and it’s probably sprained or broken or—”

“Your jawline is a little fucked up,” Kent interrupts. Jack flips Kent the bird. Kent eyes it and continues on anyway. “Destroying that nice chiseled look you had going on. Also, your beard is atrocious. You should shave it.” Jack’s stomach swoops, and he darts his hand to his beard, fingers twisting around the ends of it. Kent has opinions about his facial hair, about his face. “Get that dumb smile off your face, hockey numb-nut.” Jack tries, but he obviously fails. Kent rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You do you. Have you ever thought about coming up here during the winter to play some pond hockey?”

“Would you be here to play it with me?”

Kent goes quiet for a few moments. “I don’t really play hockey. But yeah, I could try to be around.”

“Can you skate? Because if not,” Jack hurries on, “I can totally teach you.” Jack flushes as soon as the words leave his mouth. His thoughts jump to the way his teammates skate with their wives and girlfriends who can barely stand on the ice, arms wrapped around their waist, clutching hands, steadying hips.

“That could be fun,” Kent says. Jack turns a shade darker. “This mean you’re planning to come back during winter?”

Jack wants to say, “Yes, of course I’ll come back in the winter.” But he can’t. Instead, Jack shakes his head. “After the first snowfall, these roads are pretty hard to pass, and I don’t have long enough off in the season to make the trip.” Kent’s face falls. “But I would if I could,” Jack quickly adds. “I definitely would if I could. I’ve thought about it,” Jack confesses. “Was trying to figure it out during the season, but…” Jack looks away from Kent, down the line of trees encircling the lake. “Can’t do it.”

“What else does hockey take away from?” Kent asks. Jack doesn’t know how to respond. Hockey doesn’t… it takes away from some, of course it does, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything. He loves it. He loves the games and his teammates. He loves practice and the smell of ice in every rink and of burned rubber when they shoot the puck too hard, and—“If you didn’t have hockey,” Kent clarifies, “or you had more time off from hockey, what else would you do?”

“Besides visit here?”

Kent nods. Jack shrugs. “More photography, I guess. I like taking photos.”

“Oh?” Kent asks. Jack doesn’t know when Kent’s forearms came to rest on the dock, but they’re there now. Jack wants to reach out and put his hand over Kent’s skin. Jack looks away from Kent instead.

“I take a lot of the lake when I’m out here, especially at sunset or sunrise. And, I haven’t done it yet, but I want to try and take pictures of the stars, too.” Kent makes some encouraging noises, and Jack continues. He talks about how he shoots rinks, too, every the city they play in. Jack spends time capturing moments of teammates and their kids or landscapes and their beauty.

“Sounds nice,” Kent says. “Show me sometime.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees through a yawn. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“But not now. Now it’s time for your beauty sleep.”

Jack protests.

“No,” Kent says. “No, you definitely need beauty sleep tonight.” Kent pulls back from the dock with a bit of a smile. “Looking forward to seeing that jaw back to chiseled tomorrow.”

“Kent,” Jack tries, wanting to explain how one night’s sleep isn’t going to get his jaw back to looking… chiseled. But Kent laughs and waves. He pushes himself back from the dock.

“Let’s go, you geezer,” Kent teases. “Nighty-night.”

Jack grumbles. Sore in new places, he bites back a groan moving to his feet. “Good night,” Jack says. He waves at Kent and pads slowly, carefully back to his cabin. Jack turns on his porch, wanting a last look at the night sky, and movement catches his eye. Kent’s still there. Their eyes meet, and Kent salutes, before diving under the water.

Jack sleeps like a baby, and then he wakes up with more aches and pains.

Jack scowls through his new daily routine, which involves more stretching, more low impact exercises, and way more eating than it did last year. The goals are to heal, put weight back on, and get back into hockey shape.

So, Jack figures after his day of minimal activity—slipping on a pair of swim trunks and heading out to the lake during dusk—what better low impact activity to finish off the day than swimming?

Particularly swimming with Kent?

Jack flops into the lake the moment Kent’s blonde head peaks above the water. “Hello!” Jack grins when he pops up for air.

“Missed me?” Kent asks. Jack dives for Kent, missing by kilometers. Kent retaliates, not missing by a centimeter. Sputtering, Jack tries to crest Kent’s huge water wave, deals back his own surface splash. They go back and forth, until spitting water, ears dripping out lake, Jack begs mercy. He’s not out of breath, just… tired. His legs, for one, do not believe in anymore vigorous movement.

Kent laughs and calls him old, even though Jack’s pretty sure they’re the same age. Or close enough at least. Kent switches from soaking Jack to swimming wide circles around him, backstrokes smooth and lazy.

“So why don’t you go fishing anymore?” Kent asks.

Jack frowns. “What?”

“You haven’t been fishing.” Kent dives under the water for a moment and then pops back up. Kent shakes his head and splatters Jack in water. Jack sighs and wipes at his eyes. Kent grins.

“I’ve only been back one day.”

“Right, I know, but before.” Kent dips his chin under the surface. “You stopped going fishing last summer.”

Jack furrows his eyebrows, thinking back. He switches to floating on his back for a bit. “I don’t—oh,” Jack says. The fish kept fucking with his pole and his concentration. Always nibbling, never actually biting. It was kind of depressing, the futility of his efforts. And he couldn’t finish a fucking page in his book with all that ruckus. Lake fishing wasn’t supposed to be a demanding activity. “Figured it wasn’t worth the effort. Better to just pay attention to my book. Besides, I never actually caught anything. ”

Kent looks slightly aghast. “You’ve never caught anything in this lake? Do you even know how to fish?”

Jack swats at Kent, who ducks with laughter. Jack’s heart warms at the sound. “I do know how to fish. I do very well fishing everywhere else.”

Kent hums. “Well, you should try again. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Jack arches his eyebrow, or at least tries to. From Kent’s snort, Jack doesn’t believe he succeeds. “What are you going to do, swim under my lure and put a fish on it yourself?”

“Maybe,” Kent sings out, dousing Jack in a well-placed water shove. Jack scowls. He forgot how much Kent loves drenching him. Jack half heartedly tries to get Kent back, knowing he’ll be too slow. Kent lights up at the effort though, so Jack keeps trying. Kent, Jack thinks, looks really good smiling, even if his teeth sometimes look a little more pointed than normal.

Too soon, Jack has to call it a night.

“Sleepy head,” Kent teases, and Jack calls Kent a few rude names. Each name, Kent looks a little more delighted.

“Eel fucker,” Jack ends with.

“Ew,” Kent says, and then there’s a thoughtful pause. “But I guess it looks like a dick, so…”

Jack’s entire body flames. Kent doesn’t see it though, ducking immediately under the water and making his escape before Jack can think of a comeback, throttle Kent, or melt with embarrassment.

The first day Jack wakes up not unbearable sore, his dad texts and asks if Jack’s caught anything. “Nothing like some fresh fish,” Dad writes. Jack huffs. He stares at the pole lying unused and dusty in the corner of the cabin. He snaps a picture for his dad, an emphatic, “no.”

Jack takes the fishing pole out later that day. He threads the lure, casts the rod, and then leans back in the boat, hat pulled low over his face. He fully intends to drift off.

Jack almost makes it to peaceful unconsciousness when the entire pole jerks. The handle starts flying and line goes out and out and out. Jack lunges for the pole. He heaves with all his strength upward and then starts reeling. Excitement builds in Jack every challenging tug. He focuses on getting the fish in quickly. If he loses this one… Jack doesn’t lose the fish. Jack can see something quivering beneath the surface. He gives one last jerk of the pole, and the lure pops into the air, sans fish. Jack stumbles backward, almost tumbling off the boat, disappointment flashing through him. He hits hard against the side and then lands awkwardly on the ground. Fuck.

Kent’s body propels out of the water. Jack’s eyes widen, and he scrambles away the split seconds Kent is in the air. With a shout, Kent flops onto the boat.

Jack’s mouth opens and closes a few times like a dumbass fish.

“Oh no,” Kent says lamely, squirming under Jack’s gaze, “you caught me.”

Kent is gorgeous. Everywhere. Well, Jack can’t say everywhere, because Kent’s wearing swim trunks. But every bit of Kent’s body is as toned as his forearms. He has abs, actual cut abs, which Jack caught glimpses of in the moonlight. But out here, splayed on Jack’s dinky boat, Kent’s abs are on a whole different level. And Jack knows how Kent’s body can work, how it can glide through water like he isn’t even human. His thighs are strong and powerful, calves bulging with muscle. Fuck, even his feet and toes look toned.

“Jack?” Kent says cautiously. “Are you doing alright? I was pretty sure I was going to surprise you, but not, like, render you speechless.”

Jack immediately tries to get his speech capabilities back. “You are a catch,” Jack says. He immediately regrets it. “I mean, like, you pretended to be a fish, and then I caught you. And you’re definitely. Definitely a catch. A good catch. I’m a good fisherman,” Jack finishes lamely. Kent howls in laughter. Jack goes and dumps Kent off the side of the boat.

Kent crawls back on though, pale skin dripping and swim trunks clinging even tighter to—everything. Kent shimmies onto his back, sprawling out the length of the small boat, and basks in the sunshine.

“So what are you doing up so early?” Jack asks, Kent showing no signs of moving. “And in the sunshine. You’re normally more of an early evening kind of guy.” Jack taps Kent in the ribs with his foot, and Kent pops an eye open.

“I wanted to see you,” Kent answers. Then he shuts his eye. “I’m pretty tired though. You landlubbers.”

Jack snorts.

Instead of returning to the scam that’s fishing, Jack opens his book (speckled with wayward drops of water) on the Vietnam War and its atrocities, and lets Kent nap by his feet.

Kent doesn’t stir for the better part of an hour. Jack keeps glancing down at him, sprawled out with an arm covering most of his eyes. “Are you wearing sunscreen?” Jack finally asks, looking at how absolutely pale Kent is. The longer Jack stares, the more Kent’s skin appears translucent, whiter than even Jack’s own, the blue in his raised veins easy to spot.

Kent cracks open an eye. “Am I what?”

“Wearing sunscreen.”

“I don’t need sunscreen,” Kent says.

Jack starts to argue with Kent, before realizing he has absolutely no idea what to say. Yes you do need sunscreen. Maybe Kent doesn’t need sunscreen. “You don’t burn?”

Kent twists his head a little to the side, the equivalent of affirming Jack’s statement.

“But you’re really pale. Like. Ghostly. Ghostly pale.”

“Oh,” Kent says, shifting a little. “Well, I’ll get some color. Don’t burn though.”

Jack sits back in the boat and contemplates what his life would be like if he didn’t burn. It would be better. A lot better. As it is, Jack is starting to feel a little hot. It’s not from burning, Jack liberally applies sunscreen, but the sun has gotten strong. At this point, the sun cresting the top of the sky, Jack usually heads back in to avoid the worst of the heat.

Jack wants a cold glass of water. He wants one with Kent. Jack bites his tongue instead of asking Kent to join him, remembering each time Kent turned him down last summer, never for a good reason except he didn’t want to, though he never explicitly said it that way. Jack wonders if it would be rude to keep asking, if it makes Kent uncomfortable. No, Jack decides, Kent would tell Jack if he was doing something Kent didn’t like.

“Kent,” Jack says, and Kent shifts. “Do you want to get back to my place? Get out of the sun?”

Kent moves his arm from over his face and rolls up, abs rippling with the movement. Jack quickly jerks his eyes to Kent’s face. His eyes are shining. “Like what you see?” Kent says.

“You’re just really in shape,” Jack blurts out.

Kent snorts. “Like you’re not.”

“No.” Jack shakes his head. “No, it’s different, way different,” Jack says and then finds he can’t stop talking. “I’m a professional athlete. I’ve got disproportionate amounts of muscle and large deposits of fat. I mean, it’s fine. I don’t mind. I need it. But you’ve. You’re like—” Jack fumbles for how he can explain that Kent doesn’t look like a sports athlete. Of course he looks strong, powerful, but not as if he had to work for his body. Not like a certain part of him is honed more than the other to maximize a skillset. Just all of him is so. Fuck. He looks otherworldly maybe, almost fictitious like Kent was, “—sculpted,” Jack finishes quietly, with a blush, clamping down hard on any other words that want to bubble up.

Kent bites the edge of his lip, and Jack squirms under Kent’s obvious once over—his eyes rake from Jack’s own, down to Jack’s throat. They trail over Jack’s shirt, which Jack self-consciously realizes might be too small. His hands wrap around the bottom hem, tugging at it, legs naturaling falling open to give his hands more room not because… Not because Kent’s eyes have fallen on them, scraping from Jack’s thighs fully filling his short’s fabric to his knees knotted with muscle.

Kent wrenches his gaze away, eyes snapping to over Jack’s shoulder, toward the center of the lake. Jack almost turns to try and see what Kent’s staring at. Instead, he takes the moment to tell his dick to settle the fuck down, sliding his legs closed, hunching over a little so his shirt hangs lower at his waist.

“So did you want to get off the lake for a bit?” Jack asks, though Kent doesn’t look like he’s paying attention to anything in the boat. Jack starts to twist, and Kent’s attention snaps back to him.

“What?”

Jack flushes and mutters, “Nevermind.”

Kent looks at him for a long moment. Jack averts his eyes, pretending to find the treeline interesting. “Okay,” Kent says. “For the record, I find your day pretty boring. Is this all you do? Read and float in the lake?”

Jack sputters, trying to defend himself. He doesn’t just read, he works out a lot, too. Kent doesn’t seem to find that entertaining at all, and pretty soon they’re arguing over who has the more interesting day. “You just swim all the time,” Jack argues, and Kent opens his mouth to respond and then snaps it closed.

“I do not,” Kent says, but he won’t admit any actual details of his day. Jack wonders if Kent does only swim all day and that’s why he doesn’t have any ammunition for the conversation. Jack could see Kent being too stubborn to admit otherwise. They drift onto other topics, and before Jack knows it, Kent’s saying goodbye, the sun starting to sink below the treeline, sending long shadows across the lake. Kent dives into the lake, and Jack doesn’t see him resurface.

Boat drifting aimlessly in the slow tug of the wind-swept lake, Jack listens to the soft lap of the water against the boat and the wind through the trees. He hears splashes in the distance, probably jumping fish Jack will never catch, and crickets in the reeds. Jack doesn’t know what convinces him to go swimming right then as the water and air turn colder, but he shrugs off his shirt and strips down to his boxers.

Jack dives deep into the water, and Jack’s body groans with the movement. He pushes through it, through the lingering pains and the soreness. Below the water, the birds and bugs quiet. Jack hears something else though, something akin to the chatter of conversation, muffled, distorted. Jack wants to dive down deeper, swim into the almost-laughter, welcoming murmur at the bottom of the lake. Instead, Jack breaches the surface, heaving in air. Tells himself to think straight. He swims five long stretches, away from the boat and then back to it.

Jack climbs into the boat, fabric clinging to him, and heads back to shore. He feels better, more centered. A hot shower warms Jack’s muscles, and he rolls out every part of his body he can, pushing out the soreness, the lactic acid. Jack tries not to dwell too much on how much longer recovery will take. Hopefully, recovery will only last the summer, but Jack knows his body, expects the injuries to linger with him into preseason. He doesn’t want that. But Jack supposes, drifting off to sleep, that he doesn’t really have a choice.

One week later, Jack’s fishing when his pole starts jerking. Jack reels in the line, quickly and efficiently, the way Dad taught him, and fucking Kent appears at the end of it again. Kent clamors up onto the boat, saying, “Can you believe what you just caught?” Jack shoves Kent into the water before he can say something else equally awful.

It happens a few more times, Kent showing up during the day instead of in the early evening before Jack asks, “Do you want to come back to the cabin?” He doesn’t let Kent sidestep the issue, holding Kent’s blue-green gaze firmly until Kent replies.

“Yeah,” Kent says, licking his lips, nervous. Jack suddenly finds his own hands sweating and maybe the back of his neck getting sticky, too. “So we going or what?” Kent demands.

Jack scrambles to start the motor. “Yeah, yeah of course.”

“And just water or coffee or something,” Kent says. Jack’s ears absolutely flame with the implication that that wasn’t what Jack was aiming for.

The ride back to Jack’s cabin is stilted, both of them silent. Jack’s pretty sure his brain has short circuited, and he has no idea what’s going through Kent’s. Is he excited? Scared? Happy? Dreading everything? Jack also frantically tries to go through everything in his cabin that might be out of sorts. There are only a few rooms, and Jack’s pretty sure he threw his workout clothes in the hamper, which is safely in his room and hopefully that’s where the stench is contained. Oh fuck. Does Jack’s cabin smell weird?

Jack ties up the boat and gets out onto the dock. Jack springs up the steps on his porch, opens the door to the cabin, and realizes Kent isn’t behind him. Jack spins. Kent teeters on the edge of the dock, legs wobbling and arms out to his side. “Kent?” Jack calls, starting back toward his friend. “You okay?” Kent looks concerningly unstable on solid ground. Jack sprints the last few steps to the pier and reaches out. Kent latches immediately onto Jack’s right arm, forearms flexing.

“Just,” Kent says. “Just got a bit of the sealegs, you know?”

Jack feels the frown itching along his lips and across his forehead against his better judgement. Something is wrong. Kent can’t walk. At least can’t walk right at all. With Kent leaning most of his weight on Jack, they make progress to the cabin. They take the three steps up the porch excruciatingly slowly.

Jack steers Kent toward one of the porch chairs. Kent collapses gratefully onto it the moment its within reach. “Don’t want to go in?” Jack asks, and then immediately bites his tongue. His mom wouldn’t have said anything so tactless.

Kent just huffs. “Is in there better than out here?”

Jack shrugs, watching as Kent’s hands don’t stop trembling as he clenches them into fists and then unclenches. “Not really, I guess,” Jack says, Kent’s hands still moving. “Do you want something to drink? Water, coffee? I have Gatorade, too.”

“Water,” Kent says, eyes far away. Jack nods and raps absentmindedly on the door frame before going inside. He fills up a glass from the tap and grabs himself a Gatorade. When he steps back onto the porch, Kent’s hands are pressed flat against the arm rests. Not shaking. Jack places the water right next to Kent’s hand, and Kent grabs it. A bit awkward, but his hand wraps around it, and Kent isn’t shaking anymore.

Jack takes the other chair on the porch, positioned about a meter away. Jack’s legs spread wide as he sits, and Jack cracks open the Gatorade. He takes a sip and then recaps the bottle, pressing its cool outside to his head.

“So,” Jack says, glancing over at Kent. Even though the shaking stopped, Kent still looks very out of his element. Clad only in a pair of swim trunks, his hair has dried in all sorts of wild directions, and his legs are sprawled almost as comically. Jack suddenly realizes that today is the first time he’s seen Kent walk. It’s almost as if Kent has spent more time in the water than he has on land, which is absolutely insane, but the way Kent moves in the water versus how he just moved on the land—

“You’re thinking way to hard,” Kent interrupts. “I’m not even looking at you and I can tell.”

“Where do you live?” Jack blurts out.

Kent frowns. “What?”

“Like, on the lake. Where do you live?”

Kent shrugs and stretches his legs out for increased comfortable. “On the lake.”

“But where?”

“For fuck’s sakes, Jack,” Kent snaps, ever muscle in his body coiled tight. “Does it really fucking matter?”

Jack looks away from Kent and out across the lake. “No, I guess it doesn’t.” Out of the corner of Jack’s eye, Kent relaxes. The tension drops from his body, and he takes a sip of water. Kent makes a face, but he doesn’t spit the water out. Jack watches Kent swallow.

“What matters,” Kent says, “is that we’re enjoying hanging out with one another, right?”

Jack agrees, and they move onto different topics. Namely, hockey. Kent has a lot of questions about the game, and Jack is more than happy to oblige. He purposely does not ask how someone in the area knows basically nothing about hockey. Just like how he doesn’t ask why Kent doesn’t walk properly.

As the air starts to cool and the sun begins to set, Jack offers Kent something else to drink. “I can make up a pot of tea,” Jack says. “Get something warm”

“Are you getting cold?” Kent asks.

Jack glances down at himself. He’s wearing only a t-shirt and shorts. Of course he’s cold now that sun has gone down. “Are you telling me you aren’t?” Kent has on even less clothing, which is both a blessing and a curse. And his skin, he doesn’t look as pale anymore. Still white, but only slightly lighter than Jack now instead of like a ghost.

“Um,” Kent says. “No?” And this his eyes shoot wide. “Where’s the sun?”

“What?”

“Jack, where’s the sun?”

Jack has had a lot of weird conversations with Kent, but this one tops the cake. “It’s behind the trees. The sun is setting. Like it does literally every—”

“I need to go,” Kent says, shooting to his feet. He wobbles violently. Jack lunges to Kent’s side. Kent’s hands flash out and lock like vice grips onto Jack’s forearm. Jack does his best not to wince.

“Where do you need to go?” Jack asks. Kent struggles to move down the stairs. Jack tries to take the lead, guiding Kent along. Kent keeps slipping, but he doesn’t fall. Jack makes sure he doesn’t fall.

Kent flounders for a moment, and then says. “I need to get home.”

“I can take you there, if you’re in a rush,” Jack says. “I have my car or my boat. Or if you don’t want me to see where you live,” Jack rushes on. “You can just borrow it, and—”

Kent surges forward. Jack doesn’t move fast enough. Kent falls, and then his arms shove him back to his feet. Jack grasps at Kent’s waist, hands wrapping securely around Kent’s sides. Jack grunts with the effort, but gets Kent into his arms. They move quicker that way, though Jack isn’t really running, just taking long, even strides to the dock. Jack starts to deposit Kent in the boat. Kent has other ideas. He springs out of Jack’s arms and into the water. He lands with a splash, showering Jack in water. Kent’s under for a while, enough for Jack to start twitching, shorts damps. Jack starts wondering if Kent is even going to bother surfacing when he finally does. “Thanks,” Kent says, shortly, briefly.

“The boat will be faster,” Jack tries to offer. Kent ignores him, shooting off through the water. Jack rocks back on his heels and stares at the place Kent took off from.

Jack doesn’t see Kent for a full day, and Kent’s absence doesn’t sit well. Kent didn’t look that great when he swam away. He wasn’t walking that well either. He looked. Unsteady. Sick. His skin almost whiter than snow.

Kent finally turns up the next evening at their spot, calling for Jack to join him for a swim. Jack peers into the moonlight at Kent’s face. He looks fine. He sounds fine. He’s swimming fine. He had color in his skin again.

Jack leans over the boat, knowing he’s staring but not able to help. Kent just. He doesn’t look.

“Jack,” Kent says, and Jack doesn’t know how it happened, but Kent’s inches from his face. Jack can’t help his gaze dropping to Kent’s lips. They look. He looks. Kent is.

“Are you sick?” Jack blurts out instead of every other thought running through his mind.

Kent jerks backward, his movement sending little waves rocking the boat. “What?”

“You couldn’t walk yesterday. Or you could, but not very well.” Kent doesn’t say anything. “It’s not an issue or anything. Obviously you can move around great, and you could always get a cane or whatever. But. I just want to know if you’re okay or if you’re sick.”

Kent’s answer is a long time coming, his eyes unfocused, turned toward Jack but not looking at him.

“No,” Kent finally says. “I’m not. I’m not sick. I just have a hard time walking.”

Jack nods sharply. “That’s why you swim all the time.” It makes sense.

“Yeah,” Kent agrees. “Yeah, that’s why I swim all the time.”

“Okay,” Jack says. He clamors into the water, bringing him and Kent closer together. “We don’t have to go out of the water then. Or if we do, I can carry you.”

Kent scowls. “Or I can learn to walk.”

Jack quirks a smile. “Or you could learn to walk.” Kent shoves Jack’s head underwater. Jack comes up sputtering, and Kent’s laughing, already too far from Jack’s reach to retaliate.

Over the next few days, Kent starts to arrive at noon instead of in the evening. He pulls himself up into the boat, arms lifting his body effortlessly. They talk as Kent drifts off to sleep, and then Jack reads. Usually about WWII, sometimes about the Vietnam War. Kent sprawls out in the little space the boat offers, and Jack doesn’t try too hard to keep his body parts to himself. His leg ends up pressed against Kent’s side, or his toes wedge under Kent’s back.

When the heat gets too much, Jack suggests they head inside. Sometimes Kent agrees, sometimes he doesn’t. Though Kent starts to agree more than he doesn’t. They usually hang out on the porch, but one day Kent wants to go inside.

Jack grins and turns on the TV, which gets maybe five channels out here in the middle of nowhere. While Kent’s laughing at the newscasters, Jack digs into the back of the dingy entertainment center to find an old Nintendo 64. Kent’s eyes light up.

“Never played,” Kent says, which is perfectly fine with Jack. Even though Jack has played a lot before, him and Kent are probably equally awful at the games. When the sun starts to go down, Kent staggers back out to the lake. Sometimes he accepts Jack’s help. Sometimes he doesn’t.

“Where do you want to be in five years?” Kent asks one day. They’re basking in the shade on the porch. Jack has a Gatorade, like he did the first day, and Kent a glass of water.

“I don’t know,” Jack says. “That’s hard. Still playing hockey, I guess.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know.” Jack twists his body to get a better look at Kent. “What do you want in five years?”

Kent shrugs. “I dunno. See the world or something.”

“You been in Nominingue your whole life?” Jack asks, realizing he doesn’t actually know.

“Basically.” Kent’s eyes get that far away look they sometimes have. Jack eyebrows shoot up. “My whole family’s in the area. Brothers, sisters, parents, uncles, aunts. Great-grandparents, second-cousins, other distant relations.”

Jack’s family is his parents, who were both only children. “That’s a big family.” Jack can’t believe he doesn’t know any of them. Knows Kent’s blonde hair, pale skin would be distinctive. Jack’s sure if he saw a relation of Kent, he’d know. But cycling back through all the locals he knows, Jack realizes he hasn’t seen a single other Parson.

Kent shrugs. “For some, I guess. For you.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Seven or eight.” Jack shoots Kent a look. “Fine. I have nine. Whatever.”

Jack nearly chokes on his drink. “You make ten?”

“My parents like having sex,” Kent says as if that explains nine fucking siblings. Don’t they know what birth control is? Jack can barely contemplate the idea of having one sibling. “But anyway, it’s a lot of people to miss if I go away. You, you’ve just got your parents, and they have few enough responsibilities they can visit you whenever and wherever they want. But I’d have to come back here to see my family since they can’t leave.”

“Don’t have a car?”

“Something like that,” Kent agrees.

Jack mulls over Kent’s words. Something like that. Something like not having a car. Hasn’t gone anywhere before. Maybe Kent’s scared about traveling alone, going somewhere away from Nominingue but not knowing anyone when he arrives. With all those family members, Kent probably has never been truly alone before. Maybe he’s scared of that.

“You could stay with me,” Jack blurts. He doesn’t stop to think about his words before continuing. “If you want to get out of here. Not for a long time, so you don’t miss your family, but a day or two.” Jack’s eyes light up. Kent starts shaking his head. Jack barrels on, “I could take you to a hockey game, you could meet my teammates. I could show you around the city and you could...” Jack trails off to Kent’s frown.

“Nice offer, but I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I said no,” Kent snaps, eyes darkening.

Jack clamps his mouth shut, hurt, embarrassed. He doesn’t understand why Kent doesn’t want to go. It wouldn’t be for long. It definitely wouldn’t be a permanent solution. Money definitely wouldn’t be an obstacle for Jack. Maybe Kent doesn’t know that. “I have enough disposable income it wouldn’t be a problem,” Jack tries softly.

“Jack.”

“Right,” Jack says. His whole body starts stiffening up.

“I should be getting back,” Kent says. Jack looks at the sky and the sun hasn’t even started its descent. Jack doesn’t argue though. Kent pushes himself out of the chair on his own. He takes his time on the steps, gripping the railing the whole time, but he makes it. Jack shadows him to the dock. Kent stops with his toes curling over the edge of the pier. From there, he springs smoothly off it, arching in a graceful dive into the water. He doesn’t come up. Jack watches for Kent anyway, the way he always does.

Jack doesn’t bring up visiting again through the rest of the summer, only a few weeks left at that point. Jack and Kent dance around each other, and every moment Jack thinks he could lean in for a kiss, Kent breaks away. Protecting himself, Jack supposes. Since Kent knows summer will come to an end.

Then it does.

Jack and Kent spend Jack’s last day on the porch, watching the clouds move slowly over the lake as reflections. “I’m going to miss you,” Jack tells Kent.

“Last day?”

“Yeah.” Jack watches Kent fidget. He can't look away from Kent. From his face and his stormy eyes, from his body made of muscle, power. Jack doesn't want to lose Kent when summer ends. “You still don’t have a phone, do you?”

Kent shakes his head.

Jack casts around desperately. “What about, like, an address I can mail letters to?”

Kent gives Jack a cheeky-ass smile, and Jack prepares for Kent’s bullshit. “You just want to know where I live so you can creep on me.”

Jack almost calls Kent out on his non-answer. Almost.

But Jack doesn’t, because Kent doesn't offer another option to stay in touch. He doesn't offer anything.

It’s a rejection through and through. A final one.

Whatever has been growing between them over the summer—slowly, carefully, hesitantly—Kent doesn’t want it to continue past now.

The wind rushes out of Jack as he realizes they will never become anything more than what they are.

They’ll just be friends, flirty summertime friends.

Kent’s grin slips from his face, and Jack turns away. His throat tightens. Kent’s within arms reach, but Jack has never felt farther from him. The wind teases over the lake, sending small ripples across it.

He and Kent could’ve been something, Jack thinks. Could’ve been a summer romance. Could’ve been a fling. Could’ve been partners. Maybe. One day down the line… Jack thinks his life could’ve lined up with Kent’s, intertwined with his.

It makes Jack ache with loss, even though he didn’t have anything with Kent in the first place. Can’t miss what you don’t have, Jack tells himself.

Jack hears Kent shift, and Jack doesn’t look over. Doesn’t know how his face looks, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want Kent to see it.

Kent sighs impatiently, taps the side of his glass. Jack squeezes his eyes shut. Kent shifts. The silence rests heavy between them for one minute, two. “I guess I’ll see you next year, then.”

Jack nods, can’t find the words to say the same back. It probably wouldn’t be best for Jack to return. To see Kent, and. Nominingue has everything Jack needs in the summer, but he has money. He can buy a different cabin on a different lake. He could even buy lake house. He could probably buy an entire lake. He could get what he needs for the summer—peace, quiet, solitude—somewhere else.

Jack heads inside without responding to Kent, not knowing what to say, and that’s their goodbye. 


	3. cabin dates

Jack head rings. It rings and rings. He clamors off the ice, a trainer’s hand on his shoulder. She’s saying something to Jack, but honestly, all Jack hears is the ringing. Also pounding. His head.

He gets into the tunnel, maybe far enough down the cameras can’t see him. Jack vomits. He unloads everything he ate that day right onto the tunnel’s rubber mat.

Jack doesn’t play the rest of that game.

A CAT scan and two doctor visits later, the Falconers tell Jack the earliest he’ll be back is late November.

Jack wants to argue, wants to say he’s ready for hockey now. But if he reads too long, his head aches. If he breathes too fast, his head rings. If he moves too much, he throws up. He winces at loud noises, turns away from bright lights, and can’t lift more than 30 pounds without fainting.

November turns into December.

The Falconers tell Jack he doesn’t need to stay in the area. He should get away from hockey, from the pressure to heal, they tell him. Jack doesn’t have a house anywhere else than Providence though.

“Come home,” Mom says when he calls to update her. “It’ll be good.” Jack stays in Providence another day, locked in his room with all the blinds pulled closed, dreading having to get up for food. Jack goes back to his parent’s for the holidays.

Mom and Dad love having him, but Dad talks too loud and Mom walks too fast.

After Jack’s fourth restless night in the house, his mom corners him on the sofa. “Jack,” she says. “What if we took you up to the cabin?” Jack fidgets and picks up a pillow. He flips it over a few times. “We’ll stay at the B&B in case you need anything,” she continues, “but we’ll keep out of your hair. Just drop by for groceries and stuff. You don’t have another doctor’s appointment for two months.”

Jack pulls the pillow closer at the two month reminder. They don’t expect him to make enough improvement in two months to make it worth his or the doctor’s while to check in before then.

“Jack, honey,” his mom says, and Jack stares at the pillow, fingers digging into it. “We can pack up and head off tomorrow. I just need to hunt up some winter items to take down, a thicker blanket for that bedroom. We can pick up wood on the way down for the heater, so no need to worry about that.”

Jack shuts his eyes. He listens to his mom shift, and her slow, steady breathing. Jack doesn’t know exactly where he wants to be, but he knows he doesn’t want to stay here. With his parents hovering. Sleeping in his childhood bedroom. Avoiding his dad whenever he gets back from the gym, a morning run. It hurts—to see his dad more active than Jack is.

“Okay,” Jack says. “That sounds nice,” he amends. His mom exhales, and she drops her hands onto his, squeezing.

His mom packs more for Jack than he’s ever taken to the cabin during the summer months, but he figures overpacking in this scenario is much better than underpacking. He watches her pile in lots of warm sweaters, a few extra blankets, and then he has to go lie down. He’s pretty sure his mom packs the four pairs of long underwear his American teammates would mock him relentlessly about if they knew. But he doesn’t mind. It means she expects him to leave the confines of the cabin, go on walks, be… more like himself.

Jack spreads out in the backseat as they drive. He drifts in and out, trying to keep his head as stable as possible. It’s not too hard. Dad drives slower than normal, the roads icy and some stretches still covered in snow.

They arrive at the cabin just as nightfall hits, the entire last three miles of the drive on gravel, vomit sitting in the back of Jack’s throat. Dad immediately heads in with an armful of wood to start the heat. Mom helps Jack unload the car, and for the first time in Jack’s living memory, she carries more than he does. He wants to offer to hold more, but he can’t get the words out. Can barely make it to the bedroom with his duffel before he drops onto the mattress, too tired to cover it in sheets.

He listens to the soft rumble of his parent’s voices, their movements. They stock the fridge with groceries and some pre-prepped meals they bought in case Jack has a bad day and can’t cook. Jack wants to sleep. He can’t.

His mom gets him off the bed and to a chair. His dad presses an ice pack to his forehead, before letting Jack take over. Jack closes his eyes as Mom and Dad work together to make the bed. They don’t talk. The sigh of the sheet as it slides on fills the room. Then comes the heavier movement of the comforter, the rougher sound of the quilt. Hands run over the bedding, evening it out.

“All done,” his mom says softly.

“Love you,” his dad grunts, dropping a hand onto Jack’s head. It’s usually a comforting gesture. It just hurts now. “Sorry,” his dad says, and Jack winces at his voice, too loud next to his ear.

“We’ll be back tomorrow,” his mom promises. They let themselves out, flicking off the lights as they go. The front door clicks shut. Jack swallows in the silence. It takes him a few minutes, but he makes it to the bed, falls asleep.

Jack doesn’t fall into a routine until almost two weeks after arriving. But he gets there. Finally. He never wakes up before the sun rises, sometimes he stays in bed late enough in the day it’s almost noon. He doesn’t eat a lot for breakfast, always trying to get more down than the day before. He spends breakfast at the table, staring out the window, sometimes still tinged in frost, and watches the trees lining the lake sway. Sometimes animals dart across the frozen lake. He saw a wolf once, trotting out in the distance. Sometimes he looks just past the porch, tries to make out the patterns in the snow.

He goes out afterward, walking in one direction around the lake in snow shoes until he starts to tire. Then he goes back to the cabin, gloved fingers not yet starting to feel the cold. Sometimes Jack cooks lunch, sometimes he heats something his parents dropped off. Sometimes he throws up what he eats, sometimes he doesn’t. Jack usually tries to go for a walk again afterward, heading in the other direction. He always gets back before the sun sets, and then he has dinner.

Jack doesn’t make the walks every day, but he does his best. Then he starts to go on more frequent walks, longer ones. He starts listening to podcasts or audiobooks, too, though he still has trouble concentrating after a while. Jack starts carrying his camera with him. He takes pictures of birds, fresh snow on the ground, beautiful sunsets. He sends them to his parents when he doesn’t mind looking at his phone’s screen. Taters gets one or two, too.

Another week goes by. Jack sleeps less. He walks more. He starts improving.

One day, Jack looks up from the kitchen table, picking at a late breakfast. He looks at the snow still clinging to some trees, a squirrel flying across the ground, and then. Jack catches sight of movement on the lake. It looks like something walking. Someone, Jack corrects himself. He looks for longer, watching the person shift around, and Jack makes out a perfectly round hole in the ice. The person’s going ice fishing. Jack snorts and takes a bite of his eggs. Good fucking luck to whoever is dumb enough to fish in that stupid lake, in the freezing cold.

Jack can’t take his eyes away from the person though. First time he’s seen someone else here except his parents. They’re out on the lake, too. And there’s… there’s something familiar about the movement. Jack tries to place—it’s Kent.

Definitely his blonde hair and—Kent isn’t wearing any clothing. Not even his swim trunks. Jack clatters out of his chair. He moves too quickly, and his head starts pounding. Jack picks up a blanket, a jacket. He jams his feet into his shoes.

Jack pushes against the black crowding at the edge of his vision. Hurrying out the door, Jack pulls on his own jacket. He shoves his hands into his pockets, wishes he brought gloves or a hat, but he’s already down the porch steps. At the edge of the lake, Jack hesitates, knowing it should be thick enough for his weight, unsure how slippery it’ll be. But he knows how to walk on ice. Usually it’s in skates, but. But. It doesn’t matter what Jack’s comfortable with. Not right now. He has to do it. Kent’s not wearing any clothing out in the middle of a frozen lake in the freezing winter. Jack steps onto the lake, and snow crunches under his foot. He doesn’t even make contact with the ice. Jack keeps moving then, his shoes starting to get wet, his pants, too.

Jack moves as quickly as he can, eyes locked on Kent. Jack draws in a breath to shout, figuring he’s finally close enough for Kent to hear him.

Kent slips. Kent hits the ice, and then his body slides into the fishing hole.

Jack screams for Kent. Jack runs. Tries to at least, but his feet slide and his vision darkens. Jack has to stop. He presses his fingers against his eyes, pressing into them like it will make the dark spots go away. He blinks his eyes open, willing himself to see beyond the black dots. “Kent?” Jack calls. No answer. Kent doesn’t reemerge. Jack forces himself to start moving again, as fast as he can, breath starting to come even shorter and the dots in his vision growing.

Jack should’ve called for help, Jack realizes too late. He’s farther away from the house than he is from the fishing hole. He’s almost out of breath as it is, will be by the time he gets to the ice hole. And when he gets there—Jack has read about armies falling into frozen lakes and drowning. Even if they swim to land, if they don’t get warm, if they don’t get treated, they die, frozen to death or frostbite eating off their limbs.

Jack closes the last few steps to the hole. He falls to his knees without meaning to, but it puts him in position to plunge his arm down into the water.

“Kent!” Jack shouts, arm moving frantically, sluggishly in the freezing water. His hand starts to numb first, then his wrist, before the feeling starts to travel up his arm. Something grabs Jack’s hand. Someone, Jack corrects, and he forces his fingers to curl around whoever’s hand he found. Kent, Jack thinks, hopes, prays. Jack tugs with all his strength, vision going black. He can’t see, but he doesn’t pass out. Somehow. Jack keeps pulling up whoever’s at the end of his hand, muscles straining, body screaming.

Water splashes onto the ice. It soaks into Jack’s legs, his shirt. Jack seizes, shivering. He realizes his hand is above the water. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his vision. Jack hears Kent before he sees him. “What do you think, am I a catch or what?”

Jack feels something squeeze his hand. Kent. Has to be Kent’s hand. The fuzzy outline of Kent comes into view, and Jack, shivering, shoves the blanket at him. Jack leans over, and he empties his entire breakfast into the gap in the ice, straight into the icy depths of Lake of Great Bays.

“That was fucking gross,” Kent says. Then, “Are you alright? Jack? What are you doing here? What’s going on, what’s wrong?”

Jack doesn’t have any words left in him as he tries to focus on his breathing, tries to control a pounding headache, tries to push back dizziness, tries to stop his shivering. He doesn’t startle when Kent wraps around Jack, pulling Jack’s body under the blanket with Kent. Even after being in the ice for however long, Kent’s body is warm. Jack doesn’t know. It’s just warm. Jack leans back into Kent. Kent feels strong. Warm and strong, and Jack—he passes out.

When Jack comes to, his arms and shoulders absolutely ache, and he’s in his bed in the cabin. Jack jerks awake and rolls to the side, vomit running up his throat. Jack blindly aims for the trash can he keeps by the side of the bed. He thinks he vomits in it, at least it sounded like less splattering on the floor. Jack lets the spinning settle before he opens his eyes. What a dream, Jack thinks, and then he twists his head to a note taped to the side of his bedside lamp.

  
Had to head out, it reads. Be back when the sun rises. K.

Jack flicks his eyes toward the dark window. Jack doesn’t want to move. So he doesn’t. He goes back to sleep.

Jack wakes up with the sun streaming into the window and Kent lying over the covers next to him, reading one of Jack’s books. It takes Jack three slow, even breathes to realize what’s going on. Why Kent’s here, what happened… yesterday? Fuck, Jack’s bones still feel cold.

“Hi,” Jack croaks out, and Kent scowls at him a bit before going back to the book. “Are you a polar bear jumper, too?”

“What?” Kent asks.

“Do you like swimming in the freezing cold?”

“Yes, Jack,” Kent says, anger lining his words. “I like swimming in the warm and in the cold and in the lukewarm and in all fucking water. I was perfectly fine!”

Jack closes his eyes, because it didn’t look like that. It didn’t look right at all. Kent naked, slipping into the icy water. Not coming up. Not grabbing Jack’s hand for far, far too long. “You almost drowned,” Jack mutters, not opening his eyes.

“I didn’t almost die,” Kent snaps. “You almost died. I’m not stupid enough to put myself into a situation where I might die. Unlike you. Definitely unlike you.” Kent takes in a shuddering breath and his next words come out soft, “You’re so fucking fragile, the cold basically crippled you.”

Jack doesn’t look at Kent, stares at the wall and the TV across from him instead. “It doesn’t usually make me like that,” Jack says finally, not sure how to address Kent claiming the freezing water didn’t almost kill him. It almost killed Jack, he’s pretty sure. It was so cold. He was so cold. “I have a concussion,” Jack continues when Kent doesn’t say anything. “Cold and a concussion. They won’t let me play hockey.” Jack winces at his own words, a petulant whine in them.

“Must be awful that they won’t let you play hockey,” Kent comments.

Jack wants to agree. He falls asleep instead, his body too tired to stay awake.

The next time Jack wakes up, Kent’s still there, playing Nintendo at the foot of Jack’s bed, the volume low. Jack squeezes his eyes shut at the glow of the TV, the flash of the lights, the heavy light of the sun. “Kent?” Jack asks, “Can you turn that off?”

Kent pauses the game. “Glad you’re awake.”

“The light hurts,” Jack tries to elaborate, and then he goes back to sleep.

When Jack finally gets out of bed, Kent’s humming in the kitchen. He’s cooking what smells like fish on the stove, and Jack wonders where he got it, since Jack’s parents definitely didn’t put fish in the refrigerator for him. Kent has on his swim trunks from the summer.

“You’re walking really well,” Jack says instead of asking about anything, like the fish, which Jack expects came from the lake where Jack can never ever fucking catch anything.

Kent keeps his back turned toward Jack, working at the small stove. Jack sees the tips of his ears turn pink. “I’ve been practicing.”

“It’s looking good,” Jack says, choking back, “You look really good.” Even though that’s true. Kent’s back muscles are as defined, if not more so, now than they were this summer and—”You’re not wearing a shirt.”

Kent’s movement freeze, his shoulders tightening.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Kent starts shoveling the fish he cooked onto plates. “No.”

“How are you not—”

“I’m just not cold, Jack, okay?” Kent says to the stove. “Drop it.”

Jack doesn’t believe Kent. The cabin isn’t cold, but it’s certainly not warm. Jack turns and heads to his room. It takes longer than it normally would, body still moving slower than Jack wants it to. Jack roots through his drawers before returning to the kitchen, a sweater in hand. “Here,” Jack says, shoving it at Kent.

Kent looks at Jack’s offering. He doesn’t take it though.

“In case you get cold later,” Jack says. “Also, if my parents drop by unexpectedly, I think you’d like to be wearing something more.”

“Your parents?” Kent snatches the sweater from Jack’s hand. He shrugs it on over his shoulders. He gets a bit lost looking for the sleeves, but he gets it on.

“Yeah,” Jack says, trying not to stare because of how Kent looks in the sweater, in Jack’s sweater. Jack likes watching how the fabric moves on Kent. It’s too big for him, Jack’s broader in the shoulders and thicker all over, but it hangs well. It covers Kent’s ass, his swim trunks just sticking a few inches out the bottom. Jack never realizes how short Kent’s shorts were.

Jack can’t help the image that flashes into his mind of Kent without shorts on, wearing only the sweater. “They, um,” Jack swallows loudly, clears his throat. “They, my parents, brought me up here since I can’t drive with the, you know.” Jack waves his hand around his head. “Staying in the ski lodge and just, you know, dropping by every so often to check on me. And. And helpful stuff like that.”

Kent slides the two plates of fish onto the four-person table. “It might be fun to meet them.” Kent sits at one of the chairs, only a little unsteady on his feet, motion only a little awkward. “I was almost thinking you’d made them up in all your stories.”

Jack’s stomach does a little swoop at the idea of Kent meeting his parents. Just. Well. Jack doesn’t want to unpack that at all. Jack grabs glasses of water for both of them before sitting across from Kent. The fish smells delicious. “Well, if you meet my parents,” Jack tries to say nonchalantly, picking up his fork. “I want to meet your nine siblings.” Jack stabs at the fish.

“Okay,” Kent says. Jack nearly drops his fork. “I meet your parents, you can meet all my siblings. They’re little shits though, I’m warning you.”

“They’re younger than you?”

Kent laughs and picks up a fork to start digging into his fish. “No, no definitely not. I’m the youngest.” Kent has to pause mid-bite to readjust the sweater on him, shoving the sleeves up.

“You’re the baby of the family?” Jack asks, and then doesn’t have a follow up question, too busy shoving the food into his mouth. Kent really knows how to cook fish. Now, all Jack needs to do is keep it down while Kent’s in the cabin.

Jack does successfully keep all the fish in his stomach, the rest of the day spent collecting tidbits from Kent that Jack never knew he had access to. He learns Kent’s favorite food is a plant that only grows at the bottom of the coldest bodies of water. Kent brags that he can name every fish in the lake. Jack scoffs, “That’s because there aren’t any here.”

“Just because you can’t catch any,” Kent says with a laugh. Jack rolls his eyes, and Kent tells Jack his favorite color is blue. Kent looks quickly away from Jack’s eyes. Heat rises in Jack’s cheeks and he sees pink just start to tinge Kent’s.

“I’ve got to go,” Kent says not too long after, the sun sinking down, earlier in the winter than in the summer.

“Can we hang out again tomorrow?” Jack asks.

“Sure,” Kent says. “See you then.” Kent lets himself out, still wrapped in Jack’s sweater. Jack heads to sleep not long after that, exhaustion burning behind his eyes.

His parents stop by in early evening, and Jack slowly wakes as they turn on lights and putter around. All of a sudden, Jack’s conscious jerks awake. He and Kent never cleaned up the kitchen. There will be two plates in the sink. Two glasses. Two sets of silverware. Jack rolls over in his bed and hopes his parents don’t notice. Or if they notice, they don’t ask.

Mom asks. She comes into the room as Jack’s about to exit it. “Honey,” she says. “Did you have someone over?”

Jack stalls by going back to the bed, sitting down on the side. “Yeah,” he finally says. “Kent stopped by.” Jack clamps his mouth shut after that, hoping his mom won’t ask anything if he stops talking. His plan backfires.

“Kent?” His mom comes farther into his room, sitting down next to him on the bed. The mattress barely dips under her weight. Not the same way it does under Jack’s. “Is he a hockey friend?”

“I don’t think he can skate,” Jack answers, looking away from his mom.

“So how did you meet?”

Jack clears his throat, not sure why he’s hesitant to share. Maybe because Kent has been someone he hasn’t shared for over a year now. “On the lake a couple summers ago. We hang out.”   
  
“Oh?” Mom says, and then doesn’t say much more. She must have questions. She always has lots of questions about Jack’s friends. Maybe Jack can just get her to stay until Kent shows up, then Kent could answer all the not-yet-asked questions himself. Jack wouldn’t have to. Wouldn’t admit he still has gaping holes in his knowledge of Kent, even though they’ve spent weeks and weeks together. Two entire summers.

Jack eventually gets up and his mom helps him with his dirty laundry. They sort it together and then go into the kitchen where Dad’s frying up a couple of chicken breasts.

“Did you have fish in here?” he asks.

Jack fidgets a little as Mom pushes him into a seat at the table. “You smell it?” Dad nods and puts on some seasonings. “Uh, yeah. A friend came over and cooked.”

Jack doesn’t need to see his dad’s face to know his eyebrows just skyrocketed. “A friend?”

“Kent,” Mom says with her insinuating parent voice, laying out the dishes and silverware.

“Kent,” his dad repeats. “He play hockey?”

“No. He’s a local though.”

“Oh?” Dad brings over the pan of the chicken and a serving spatula. “Where does he work? Is he one of the Tremblay’s? I think they have a son about your age.” Dad drops a chicken breast onto Jack’s plate.

Jack wonders if he can stuff his face quick enough not to respond. Mom prompts him with a quiet, “Jack, honey.”

“I don’t know where he works,” Jack admits, pushing around his chicken. Jack glances up at two matching frowns. He cringes and starts sawing into his chicken. “Kent just, he avoids it, you know? I don’t know if he’s embarrassed or doesn’t want to talk about it or what. But he’s always busy in the evenings, so whatever.” Could never stay until sunset last summer. Couldn’t today either. Always has to leave. Always has to go.

Mom reaches out and puts a hand on Jack’s wrist. Jack blinks rapidly, throat tightening. He can’t believe he’s crying over this. It has to be the concussion.

“He’ll come around,” Mom says, squeezing his arm.

“No one really whores around here, or I’d be worried about that.”

“Bob!” Mom snaps.

Dad flushes. “I’m just saying,” he mumbles. Jack tries to sink into a puddle and disappear. After too much silence of clinking silverware, Dad clears his throat. Jack gets ready to run for the mountains. “I bet it’s just bartending or something. And anyway,” Dad says, “if he was able to catch any fish in this lake than he must be some sort of mythical being. Not a bad friend to have.”

“Good save,” Mom whispers across the table. She picks up the conversation from there, telling Jack all about his aunts and uncles back home. “Your photos have been looking very good, too. I like the one of the white rabbit.”

“And the Falconers dropped three out of four since we last saw you,” Dad chimes in.

“Dad!”

“Well, I thought it would cheer you up to hear they’ve been bad without you.” Jack… does not know how to feel about that. Mom launches into a story about how her sister’s kids still haven’t learned to skate properly and are, predictably, adorable messes when attempting to play hockey. Mom carries on that thread of conversation as her and Dad clean up the kitchen. Not long after, they say goodbye, his mom dropping a kiss onto his forehead.

Jack drags himself to the bathroom and then to bed, dropping into sleep almost immediately.

Jack sleeps until noon, waking up when he hears the porch door open and close. “Jack?” Kent’s head pops through the door frame. “Up for company?” Kent doesn’t wait for an answer and strolls into the room. He has on Jack’s sweater. Jack smiles and his eyes flutter shut. The warmth of the blankets drag him back under.

The days pass easy, Kent stopping by in the day and then leaving before the sun sets. Jack gets better little by little. First the room stops spinning when he gets up too fast. Then he can look at his phone for more than a few texts. After a while, he can read books again and go for walks longer than a few minutes.

Kent joins him for one of those walks, and Jack can’t stop staring at Kent’s bare legs, bare feet, in the sub-zero temperature. Back in the cabin, Jack strips off his hat, gloves, scarf, snowpants, jacket, sweater. Jack kicks off his snowshoes and tells Kent, “I can’t go walking with you again.” Kent frowns. ”Not if you don’t wear pants,” Jack elaborates, heading back into his bedroom. He picks up the first clean pair of sweatpants he sees. “Here.” Jack tosses them at Kent. “I get cold just looking at you.”

Kent grabs them, and Jack realizes too late they have his number on them in Falconers’s blue, and when Kent pulls the pants on over his swim trunks, the number lands right on Kent’s hip.

Jack can’t help staring at it while Kent’s lying on his bed, while they’re going for walks, while they’re cooking in the kitchen.

“Hey,” Kent says, and Jack jerks back, eyes flickering up from Kent’s hip, Jack’s number. “Are you getting dizzy again?”

“What?” Jack licks his lips, shuffles backward a bit, giving Kent more room to work at the counter. “Just, you know.”

Kent puts down his knife, turning away from the chopped vegetables. Jack’s eyes shift around the room, anywhere but Kent taking a step toward Jack. Then another. They’re almost chest to chest, and fuck, Jack can feel Kent’s body heat, always the same temperature, warm in winter and cool in summer.

“Am I reading this wrong?” Kent asks, leaning in. Jack shakes his head, lips unable to move. “Good,” Kent whispers, and his lips brush against Jack’s. Unlike Jack’s, they’re not chapped. Not at all. Jack kisses back, and Kent’s lips twitch into a smile. Jack can feel the movement against his own mouth.

They don’t eat lunch that late, but it’s later than normal. The sun starts sending longer rays into the kitchen. Jack tells Kent not to worry about the dishes, and they makeout in the kitchen until Jack can’t stand anymore.

“Making your knees weak?” Kent teases as Jack leads him into the bedroom. “Good to know I’m doing it right.”

Jack huffs in laughter and flops back on the bed. It makes his head ring a little, but he likes the way Kent looks at him from above. Jack pulls Kent toward him, and they kiss again and again. Brushes of the lips turn sloppy, mouths opening. Jack slips his hands under Kent’s sweater, and it’s the first time he feels Kent shiver.

Kent breaks the kiss and tilts their foreheads together. Kent’s eyes are closed. “Feels good,” Kent mutters.

“Good,” Jack says, and he slides his fingers against Kent’s skin and focuses on pulling that same reaction from him once more.

It’s cliche to say the next days pass in a blur, but they do. They laugh and kiss and wrap around one another. They go for long walks along the lake like in a film, and Jack snaps pictures of the landscapes, birds in flight, Kent grinning in the cold air, wearing nothing but Jack’s sweater and sweatpants.

Jack always dreads the nights though. Kent hasn’t stayed over, never wants to, never even suggests it. Jack offers all the time. But it’s like the first summer, when Kent always refused Jack’s offers to hang out at the cabin.

He’ll come around, Jack tells himself. Just like then. One day, Kent will stay the night. But Kent never says why he can’t, why he needs to leave without fail before the sun sets. It must be a job Jack figures, frustrated, running his fingers through his hair as Kent starts to head out.

“Don’t you get any days off?” Jack blurts off, and then immediately regrets it. But it’s out there now.

Kent pauses in front of the door to the porch, about to leave, feet in an extra pair of flip flops Jack found. “From what?”

“From your job. Your night job. Don’t you have days off?”

Kent frowns. “Not really, I guess. Always need to head out.”

“We’d still hang out at night during the summer,” Jack points out. “We’d go swimming, remember?”

Kent’s eyes narrow, and he takes his hand off the door handle. “Of course I remember, but that’s different.”

“You can’t spend one night here?”

Kent looks for a long time at Jack. Jack finally turns away, stares at the kitchen instead. “No,” Kent says. “I can’t.” He heads out. Jack doesn’t sleep well that night, but that’s almost normal after Kent leaves.

Kent returns to the cabin the next day, sun just peaking over the edge of the lake. Jack looks up from the kitchen table, where he’s been nursing a cup of tea for an hour, listening to a book about the Korean War. He pauses it.

“Morning,” Kent says, and goes to make himself a cup of coffee. They go for a walk, and Jack even jogs a little. Not a lot, but a little stretch of their path. Kent sort of tries to keep up, but declares he hates running and eventually catches up when Jack slows down, waits for him a little.

Kent laces their fingers together as they head back to the cabin, and they don’t even make breakfast. They go straight to the bed, pressing hands against each other’s bodies, kissing each other’s lips, shoulders, necks.

The next day is a bad day. Jack wonders if it’s because of the jogging. Hopes it’s not. Kent finds him in bed and offers to bring him breakfast. “Later,” Jack tells Kent and drifts off to sleep, where the headache can’t follow him.

“Jack?” his mom says, and Jack blinks away midday. He looks around and there’s his mom in the bedroom doorway, and there’s Kent lying next to him. Kent, to his credit, doesn’t look terrified.

“Bad day,” Jack says, sort of thankful for it. Even though he’s pretty sure he’s throwing Kent to the wolves. “This is Kent, Mom.” Jack closes his eyes again, fidgets on the pillow until he finds a cool spot.

“I’m Alicia,” Mom says. “Jack’s mom,” and then Jack doesn’t hear much more.

Jack finally gets up a few hours later, stumbling into the family room with the one couch and two arm chairs Jack rarely uses, preferring the porch in the summer and his bed in the winter. Kent’s on the couch. Jack shuffles over to join him, and his parents smile at them both from their chairs. They pick up the conversation where it left off, or Mom does anyway. They’re talking about movies Kent hasn’t seen.

“He hasn’t seen any of mine,” Mom says, and Jack smiles.

“That’s good.” Jack nudges Kent with his elbow. “I’ve seen all of them multiple times. You don’t want to go through that.”

Dad laughs loudly. “I fell in love with your mom through those movies.” Mom gives Dad a look, and Jack smiles at the stupid lie. Mom starts explaining to Kent how they actually fell in love. It happened before she was making lots of money.

Mom eventually asks Kent if he wants to stay for dinner. Jack watches Kent’s eyes flick to the window, to the sun starting to sink down. “Can’t,” he says, and it sounds regrettable.

“Ah,” Jack’s dad says. “Work.”

Kent shrugs and doesn’t deny it. He lets himself out through the deck door, wearing Jack’s sweater, Jack’s sweatpants, and Jack’s flip flops. Jack wants to reach out and grab Kent’s arm, bring him close for a kiss. The way they always say goodbye. But Kent’s already gone.

Dad watches Kent through the window for a while before Jack asks him to stop. Dad takes one final glance and then turns back to look at Jack. Jack thinks Dad’s going to make a comment about Kent’s fashion choices, particularly about the flip flops in the winter. He doesn’t though, just asks, “You met him while out swimming?”

“He’s a really good swimmer,” Jack answers. Kent could out swim him even when Jack was at his fittest. He could duck under water like lightening and pop up meters away before Jack could blink. Incredible. Kent is incredible.

“Check up is in seven days,” Dad says, and Jack nods, looking absently to the window, to the frozen lake. Jack knows. He’s been counting down the days he has left of this. Of Kent.

It’s too short a time, but Jack’s aching to play hockey again. To get back onto the ice, cut his blades into the rink. He wants to see his teammates and joke with the staff and laugh at Tater’s awful jokes.

Jack wants Kent by his side, too, Jack realizes with a start. He wants Kent to meet his teammates, meet his college friends, meet everyone. Jack wants Kent in his life.

“Would you come with me if I asked?” Jack wants to know, the two of them tucked around one another in bed. Kent has a few hours before sunset, before he needs to leave. Jack only has a few hours left before he needs to leave, too. “To Providence. Not for a long time, maybe a week or something.”

Kent shifts uncomfortably in Jack’s arms. “I want to,” Kent begins, and Jack already knows where it’s going, “but I can’t. I can’t leave my family.”

“What about your five year plan?” Jack wants to know. He tries not to sound angry, not sure if he manages. “You told me you wanted to be somewhere else by then.”

Kent laughs. “What I want and what’s possible are two completely different—”

“I’m telling you it’s possible. If it’s money or accommodations or not having friends, you don’t have to worry. We’ll figure it—”

“No!” Kent snaps, but he doesn’t shift away. Jack tightens his arms around Kent. “No, it’s not that. It’s just not possible, okay? It might not ever be.”

“I don’t get it,” Jack says.

Kent ducks his head down. “Just drop it.”

“What?” Jack says, pulling back. “No. No, you’re being so fucking cryptic about it, and I thought, I thought we could talk to one another.” Even as Jack says it, he realizes how untrue his own statement is. Jack can talk, Jack has been talking about everything to Kent, like always, but Kent.

Jack rolls away from Kent, head starting to throb. Kent rarely says anything back. He did in the beginning, in the beginning when Jack’s concussion was still so bad. Thinking back though, Jack isn’t 100 percent sure what all Kent said, what he revealed. Jack still doesn’t even know what Kent does for work. Still doesn’t know what’s keeping Kent back. Jack doesn’t even know the name of a single sibling. Fuck, Kent has nine of them. How has he never told a story about one of them?

“I better go,” Kent says, sitting up, getting out of bed. Jack listens to him pull on Jack’s sweater, Jack’s sweatpants. “See you in the summer?” Kent asks, pausing before leaving the bedroom.

Jack wants to say, “No, not if you keep acting like this.” But he nods, throat tightening. He shifts to look at Kent hovering in the doorway. “I’ll be back,” Jack promises.

Kent smiles, something small, and then he’s gone.

Jack’s parents arrive bright and early the next day. It’s a long day of travel back to Providence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more than half-way there! thanks for reading :)


	4. movie dates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the incredibly long delay here--life got in the way as it sometimes does, and then instead of solely proofing there was some rewriting and adding lots of thousands of words... enough excuses though, i hope you enjoy this next chapter!

As soon as the Falconers are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, Coach starts giving Jack’s ice time to the call ups. They need the development time, obviously, but, Jack — tapping his stick against the bench, flipping his mouth guard in and out — doesn’t understand why he even needs to be suited up right now, sitting on the bench, at the game. Sure he’s an alternate captain, but it makes it worse. To just be sitting there. Not playing. Or, playing only five minutes.

Jack wants to be playing all his minutes or none of his minutes. He doesn’t want this in between, chained to the bench, unable to make any impact, go where he wants.

Even though playing less helps the perpetual throb in Jack’s right ankle and the wave of dizziness he still gets if he pushes too hard.

A lingering side effect to the concussion, the doctor tells Jack four games before the end of the season, Jack bouncing his left knee up and down in the office.

When the final buzzer of the season’s last game sounds, Jack bites the inside of his cheeks to keep a smile from spreading. They lost.

It’s the start of summer.

Finally.

Jack tries to stuff down the happiness rising in his chest.

They file off the ice, to the locker room. Jack taps a few legs, a couple sweaty heads of AHL players, and tries to walk off the spring in his step.

He can’t help it though, hurrying through his shower, planning to head directly home. The quicker he gets home, the quicker he goes to sleep. Which means the quicker the next day comes. The sooner he arrives in Nominingue. The sooner—

The press thwart him, waiting with cameras, microphones, and recorders. The video camera’s front light clicks on. A DSLR’s shutter clicks in rapid fire. Jack can’t help rolling through his feet, from his heels up to his toes, then back. “So last game,” Sara from WPRI starts, bypassing a proper greeting, “what are your plans for the summer, so you can come back stronger next year?”

Jack launches into an answer, rambling about resting up, healing. Jack snaps his mouth shut after a few sentences to many. He hurries to tack on at the end, “And training, of course,” so Coach won’t get mad, trade Jack over the summer.

“Lot to say today,” Jess says, an eyebrow raised, and thankfully doesn’t ask a follow up question about Jack’s training regime, which he hasn’t thought about. At least not beyond the fact that it’s taking place by the lake. In the lake maybe, too. “Looking forward to the off season?”

A smiles breaks onto Jack’s face. The media stare. Jack coughs and reorganizes his face, pressing his lips into a thin line. His appropriate media face. Especially for after a loss. Particularly after this loss. Jack mumbles through the rest of the interview, face flushed and burning. The media finally turn away when Hartsy enters, flip flops smacking against the floor.

Jack lets out a sigh of relief, grabbing his bag. He starts to make a break for it, but Snowy stops him, forcefully shoving himself between Jack and the exit. “Thought we were going out tonight?”

“Um,” Jack says, glancing around the room and fishing for something to say. He definitely wasn’t planning on going out tonight — the sooner he goes home, the sooner he wakes up, the sooner he goes to locker room clean out, the sooner Jack sees Kent again. It’s his mantra right now.

The sooner Jack sees Kent.

Jack has been packed for days, lugging around his suitcase and duffel bag in his truck. As if Coach was going to give him a lucky break and tell him not to bother dressing up for the last game, and then Jack was going to just drive northwest, skipping locker cleanout.

“So,” Snowy prompts as Jack swivels his head to try and gauge what the other guys are planning. One of the AHL call-ups stares back at Jack, then glances away, then looks back at him. If Jack had to guess, he would say the kid wants Jack to go out with the team tonight. And Jack should really learn that guy’s name, because without the jersey on, Jack’s not 100 percent sure if he’s Guther or Harkness.

“Yeah,” Jack says to Snowy, thinking of the best way to subtly find out who is who tonight. “I’ll get a drink.”

Jack spends the next hour nursing one beer and unable to help how many times he checks his phone to watch minutes tick by. He tries to focus on the conversations, figure out which call-up is which, but Tater finally shoves him out of the booth.

“Go home,” he says. “Go sleep, see tomorrow.”

Jack obliges. Though he makes sure to say his goodbyes, spends a few extra minutes talking with Harkness, or who Jack thinks is Harkness, and then slides into his truck. On the way home, Jack keeps catching sight of his suitcase and duffel in the rearview mirror, the streetlights illuminating them between one breath and another.

One more day until he can leave.

 

Jack goes through locker cleanout quicker than ever before, avoiding reporters’ eyes whenever possible to further streamline the process.

“Excited to see no one on lake house for months?” Tater asks, low and almost secretive.

Jack ducks his head with a flush. There’s no way Tater could know, but, “There’s someone up there,” Jack admits, before all but sprinting to year-end interviews with the coaching staff, flushing with his admittance. The discussions take longer than Jack wants. Everyone’s asking more questions than usual, wanting more insight from Jack than they typically do. Jack tries to keep his answers short, time-sensitive, even though he shouldn’t. He’s part of the leadership. Needs to act like it. Jack should be giving these discussions his full attention. But he has places to be. Someone to see.

When the last interview finishes, Jack books it out of the facilities. He swings into the truck and then heads straight to Nominingue. It’s a seven, eight hour drive. Jack calls his parents somewhere in Vermont, letting them know he’s driving straight to the lake. They understand, his dad says. They were young and in love once, too. Jack flushes and doesn’t correct their assumption. He thinks it might be true.

Jack lost track of the number of times he wanted to talk to Kent throughout the season, bitch about teammates or games, listen to Kent talk about nothing for entire days. Jack couldn’t pick up the phone and call Kent, text him, but Jack thought about Kent a lot. About the days they spent together, in the cabin, walking around the lake, in bed.

Throughout the season, Jack carefully filed away dozens of pictures he thought Kent would like, of different rinks, different cities, different landscapes. Jack pulled together a list of stories to share about his teammates and traveling and the pranks they pulled. He wants to tell Kent how, when the Falconers played the Schooners, Jack snuck away to swim in the Pacific Ocean. “And I thought of you,” Jack wants to tell Kent. “Of us.”

When Jack arrives at the cabin, wheels crunching over gravel, a thin sliver of the moon is high in the sky. Too late for Jack normally, but he’s too wired for sleep, too close to Kent.

Jack lugs the boat from its winter home in the shed into the water, and then he hops right in. He doesn’t know if Kent will be swimming tonight, but Jack. Well Jack doesn’t not know Kent won’t be out, splashing around in their section of the lake. “Kent,” Jack starts calling softly, hopefully. The boat putters out into deeper waters, breaking the soft murmur of nature’s night.

Far from the shore, Jack turns the motor off, lets the till go, and drops a hand into the cold water. He twists his hand open and close, water drifting through his grasp.

Jack eyes skim the surface of the lake, searching for Kent’s blonde hair and pale skin. He wonders what color Kent’s eyes will look tonight. Blue, green, the color of the lake? A dark, endless blue-black?

“Kent,” Jack whispers as if somehow the water will take Kent’s name and echo it around the lake until Kent answers Jack’s call.

The wind slides through the trees and plays with Jack’s hair. The frogs stop croaking and go to sleep, but the crickets grow louder, singing the temperature into the open sky. A few birds call goodnight, and Jack hears an owl in the distance. Jack leans closer to the lap of the water, and it’s almost as it Jack can hear a world underneath the water: murmurs of fish and bubbles of laughter, movement.

A hand latches onto to Jack’s, and their fingers entwine. Jack’s heart pounds, and he pulls. Kent slips to the surface, hair clinging to his skin. Maybe Jack should be hesitant because of how they left it the last time he was here. But Kent’s all he’s been thinking about. When Jack thought of summer, he thought of Kent. When he thought of happiness, he thought of Kent. When Jack thought of anything that wasn’t hockey. He thought of Kent. Of this. Of them.

Jack leans down and fits their lips together. Kent grins into his mouth.

Jack draws back, and Kent takes up his place on the side of the boat, forearms overlapping, water wrapping around his waist. He looks up at Jack, and Jack was right. Kent’s eyes are the color of the lake tonight, the crescent moon shining into them as it starts its journey below the trees. Jack reaches out and presses his palm to Kent’s cheek.

Kent kisses Jack’s palm. “Missed me?”

Jack shakes his head. Of course he missed Kent, what kind of question is that. Jack leans down and catches Kent’s upturned face in a kiss again. Jack pulls back. Leans back down, takes another kiss, letting this one linger. “Just got in a few minutes ago.”

Kent grins. “Way past your bedtime.”

“Wanted to see you.” Jack leans back to look more fully at Kent.

Kent raises himself up, forearms flexing, and steals his own kiss, mouth opening slightly under Jack’s as it wanting... “I’ve got to go,” Kent presses into Jack’s lips. Jack’s throat closes. He wants to pull Kent onto the boat, run his hands along Kent’s pale skin, hard muscles, not let him go back into the lake. Jack wants— “But I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Kent promises, his torso slipping back down into the water. “Have plans for the day, but I’ll see you at dusk. Tomorrow,” Kent promises.

Kent glances off to his left, and then raps his knuckles once against the side of the boat. He shoves off, dives down into the water, his lean, pale torso glinting in the moonlight.

“Don’t go,” Jack wants to call after him. But Kent is already gone. Jack’s eyes start to droop, his body growing colder as it tires. Jack turns the engine back on, guides the boat back to the cabin. He plans to head start to bed, but his eyes catch on the sky, on the stars. Brilliant and breathtaking. The moon not bright enough to wash out the entirety of the milky way. And Jack’s stomach swoops at the vast sky, the grandness of the night. Jack wants to bottle up this feeling, of the stars and the lake and the lingering feeling of Kent’s lips against Jack’s own. He wants to capture this moment, preserve it. Take it out whenever he needs it.

Jack gets his camera, twisting the new lens he bought onto it with a satisfying click. This is the lens he bought for the stars, the one he was telling Kent about last summer. Jack puts up the tripod on the porch, sets the f-stop large and the exposure long. He drags a chair over to right beside it and leans back in it, listening to the slow shutter of the camera, his eyes adjusting to the low light. What’s left of the moon’s glow shining just enough light to illuminate the trees, the top of the lake.

A gust of wind startles Jack awake. He jerks up. Jack tugs his tripod inside and collapses on the couch. He doesn’t have energy to put sheets on the bed. Kent’s smile dances behind his eyelids, Kent’s lips a phantom memory on Jack’s, and the chattering sound of night slips through the walls and into his ears.

 

Jack starts his routine the next day. Or part of it, a little groggy from staying up so late the night before. He naps throughout the first half of the afternoon, and then heads out with his boat, setting up the fishing pole out of habit. He cracks open his book about the Korean War and makes it through half a chapter when he pole starts to jiggle.

Jack laughs Kent’s name, not expecting him until dusk, and exchanges his book for the rod, starting to reel. Except when Jack lifts the hook from the water, Kent doesn’t fly out and into Jack’s boat. Instead a head bobs to the surface, the body submerged in the water. She has long blonde hair. Same as Kent, Jack realizes, and then another woman emerges. Same blonde hair. Then a third. Their skin is the same translucent Kent’s was when they first met.

“Hi, Jack,” the first says, and she rises up higher in the water. Her hair runs over her chest, down her body as far as Jack can see until the dark lake encloses around the rest of her. “I’m Kim,” she says. She moves closer to the boat, eyes latched onto Jack’s. He looks away uncomfortably to the other two blondes.

The one slips below the water and reappears closer to Kim. “Kate,” she says as she shifts her hair off her shoulders and pushes it to her back. Her arms are lithe but packed with muscle. Jack glances at Kim, and her gaze hasn’t moved from Jack.

“Katherine,” says the last swimmer, dipping under the surface. Jack glances around for her as Kim and Kate move closer. Hands slam into the side of his boat. Jack flinches back. Katherine pulls her face above the side of the boat, grinning. Exactly the same way Kent does. “It’s good to finally meet you,” Katherine says.

Jack opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. Instead, he runs fingers through his hair, trying to flatten it. He smears a blotch of sunscreen he missed on his arm into his skin. Jack was not prepared to meet any of Kent’s siblings, let alone three of them. Not one bit. Not now. Not so soon after he got back. After so little time with Kent.

And they look like. Alluring. Stunning. Somehow misplaced in the harsh rays of the sun. Skin too white. Pupils too large in the bright sun. And they swim like, like Kent, like they were born too, effortlessly, gracefully.

“Are you all really good swimmers?” Jack blurts out. He cringes. Why couldn’t he start with a, “Hello” or “How are you?” Katherine laughs though, leaning closer to Jack. Strands of her hair fall into the boat, drip against the wood. Jack glances around her to Kim and Kate, who are still a good two meters away, but moving closer.

“Of course we are all good swimmers,” says Katherine, a clicking sound chattering behind her words. How Kent sometimes used to talk that first summer. “We have the right genes.” She flicks her head back and grins at her sisters, teeth sharper than… Jack shakes his head. “But obviously,” Katherine continues, eyes holding Jack’s, “it helps that we’re mer—”

Katherine crashes off the side of the boat. Jack teeters at the sudden weight shift. Kate appears in Katherine’s place, her forearms lying across the boat’s edge like Kent’s do. She steadies the boat. “It helps that we’re always spending time in the lake,” Kate says.

Jack nods. That would make sense even though Jack has never seen them—Kate yelps and disappears with a splash. Jack scrambles to the center of the boat, trying to steady it. Kate rears out of the water, cursing and shouting. Katherine meets her, and then they both topple into the water. Bubbles don’t come up after them.

Kim swims to the boat in long, even strokes, ignoring her sisters. As Kate and Katherine stay under the water for a longer and longer stretch of time, Jack wonders if he should start to worry. But Kim doesn’t seem concerned, so Jack. Well, he tries not to worry either.

Jack clears his throat when Kim is half a meter from him. “Have you seen Kent?”.

“We wanted to meet you,” says Kim, like it explains everything.

Jack’s eyes twitch to a splash, thinking it could be Kent. Just his two sisters though, yelling, splashing. “So is he coming?”

Kim shrugs. “He’ll see you soon, I guess.”

“Busy during the day,” Jack offers.

“Today,” Kim clarifies. “Parents needed him. He hadn’t expected you back for a few more days.”

Jack shrugs, unsure how to answer, and Kim moves closer. The sun beats down against his back, and he twitches under Kim’s gaze.

The silence between them stretches. “So what do you guys do?” Jack asks. “Kent never mentioned it.”

Kim doesn’t respond until she’s barely a hair away from the boat. “Did he tell you what he does for a living?”

“He doesn’t like talking about work,” Jack responds. “Do any of you work in hospitality? Like, at the lodge or something?”

Kim chuckles, the same click behind Katherine’s words beginning to color Kim’s. “No, absolutely not. We’re a little unqualified for it. Some of us are practicing, though,” Kim continues, “like our brother. Working to become more hospitable.”

“So he’s going to work at the lodge?”

“Trying his hand at being a people person,” she responds instead.

Jack opens his mouth to ask what exactly that means.

“Kim,” Kent hisses. Jack jerks his gaze from Kim to Kent, coming around the edge of the boat. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Kent’s eyes are a dark, stormy blue, pupils shot wide in a way they haven’t been recently. His body is tense, his mouth a hard line. He moves between Jack and her.

“Talking,” Kim says, and the clicks dipping under the edges of her voice become louder, her syllables more distorted. “Talking about being hospitable.”

“Well, I don’t want,” Kent starts, teeth clicking together as Katherine and Kate return. Their skin looks even paler, their hair whiter than before. They smile, and their teeth look sharp, pointed. Kent snaps out the rest of his sentence, and Jack tries to piece through the words in his head, but they’re nothing more than sounds from between Kent’s teeth, the back of his throat. As Jack watches, Kent’s skin begins to lose what little color it has, fading into a pure, pallor white.

Kate and Katherine laugh almost in synchrony, bursting into a series of clicks and chatter, interspersed with high pitched notes, low rumblings. Jack leans forward in the boat, can’t help himself. Tries to get closer. Kent answers them, his entire back stiff, posture ridged.

Then Kent lunges. Katherine jerks down into the water. Kim twitches her gaze back to Jack. Now that Kent isn’t between her and Jack, she starts moving closer. She doesn’t speak English anymore, her tongue clicking and her teeth scraping together. Kate slides up beside her, adding her ringing voice to her sister’s. It sounds almost like music. Abstract. A disjointed harmony. Jack latches his hands to the side of the boat, using the edge as leverage to lean farther over, closer to them.

Kate’s hand slips over Jack’s. Her hands are cool, wet. She smiles up at him. Jack swallows and—

Kate shrieks, water engulfing her. Jack yanks his hand back before she pulls him under. Kim disappears into the water, too. Until no one is left in the lake except Jack, sitting on the boat, body tense. He sweeps the water for the Parsons and doesn’t find them.

Okay, Jack thinks, finding himself breathing hard. Right.

No one returns.

Jack picks up his book, taking a few tries to thumb open to the page he was on before Kent’s sisters showed up.

 

The sun starts to set, dark blues edging into the sky, as Jack finishes dinner. He heads out to the lake not much later. When he arrives at their spot, Kent is already there, floating on his back.

“Kent,” Jack calls, and Kent slips to his stomach, swimming over to Jack. Jack cuts the engine, and Kent takes up his place on the side of the boat.

“Sorry about my sisters,” Kent says in greeting, the clicks gone from the back of his throat, his teeth blunt, skin closer to Jack’s color than the moon’s. He looks normal. He looks like Kent. Jack closes his eyes for a moment. They’re playing tricks on him. “They can be a little much,” Kent continues.

Jack opens his eyes. Kent still looks like Kent. A breath he didn’t realize he was holding zips out of his lungs. “Said you were practicing for a job?”

Kent grimaces. “Not really. Just, working on some stuff.”

Jack waits for Kent to elaborate, hoping he will. He doesn’t though. “Didn’t know you could speak another language, that’s cool.”

Kent shakes his head. “Not that cool. You won’t hear anyone else speaking it.”

“So the locals around here…?” Jack trails off, Kent shaking his head.

“Pretty much just my family. Something my, like, great-great-great-grandparents brought over.”

Jack lets out a low whistle. “That’s a long time.”

Kent makes a face and changes the subject. “So are we going swimming or not?”

Jack grins, and he drops over the side within milliseconds. It doesn’t take long before Jack gets distracted from swimming by Kent’s mouth. He presses his lips against Kent’s, and then they’re trading lazy kisses while treading water.

“Want to come into the boat?” Jack suggests, pulling Kent even closer, running his hands over Kent’s arms. “Kind of cold. Or we could go back to the cabin and huddle for warmth.”

Kent shakes his head, and Jack pulls back. There’s no reason for Kent not to get in the boat, come back to the cabin. Not after the winter. Kent let himself into the cabin every morning, would climb under the blankets with Jack.

Jack tries to find the answer in Kent’s expression, but Kent is still smiling at Jack, watching him. Jack swallows, shrugs as best as he can in the water. “Well, tomorrow then?” Jack asks Kent to promise. He splashes a little. To show Kent he’s not mad. Not upset. Not hurt. Even though he is. He shouldn’t be, Jack knows, but he can’t control it.

“See you at the cabin,” Kent replies. He steals one kiss, two, three, before moving back with a grin. He slips under the surface, swims away. It takes Jack another minute before he clamors into the boat, turns on the engine, heads back to his home.

Kent isn’t in the cabin when Jack wakes up, but he is after Jack’s morning sprints, sitting on the floor in Jack’s room playing video games, legs sprawled, hair sticking up, chest bare. When Kent sees Jack, he grins, face lighting up, even though Jack is sweaty and disgusting. Jack turns back into the kitchen to make breakfast, hiding his flushed face. Jack loves everything about Kent: his hair, his dumb jokes, his smile.

Kent kisses Jack good morning and wraps his arms around Jack’s body as Jack scrambles a few eggs. Jack loves the press of Kent against his back, the warmth, the way Kent’s palms slide over his stomach, uncaring of the fat building up there. Kent kisses the side of Jack’s neck and then lets go.

They dig into the eggs, watching the lake through the open window, listening to the birds sing to the sun.

Kent’s a little unsteady on his feet again, Jack notices throughout the day. But it’s probably something that comes and goes. He doesn’t want to point it out to Kent though, wants Kent to just enjoy everything he is, everything they are. Everything they could be.

Jack wants to go somewhere with Kent, he decides as Kent naps on the deck chair and Jack fails at reading. Somewhere not here. In the future, maybe one day, Kent will come with Jack to Providence. It’s too far to ask about now. But Jack thinks he could get Kent to agree to a day trip. Agree to a date. They’ve never been on a proper date. Kent’s been over, and Jack’s cooked and visa versa. Kent has slept in Jack’s bed and washed in his shower, but they’ve never gone out together.

Maybe Jack should take Kent on a picnic. Or they could drive into one of Montreal’s suburbs and see a movie. Dinner and a movie. Or maybe lunch and a movie so Kent can get back before sundown, if he still needs to. The good thing about summer, Jack decides, is that the days are longer, sunset comes later.

The longer he waits, Jack thinks. The later night falls.

 

Days later, they’re laying side by side in the boat, Jack mostly reading and Kent mostly sleeping. “Kent,” Jack asks after finishing a chapter. He sits up and looks down at Kent. Jack’s eyes slip off Kent’s sleeping face and down his toned chest, over his thighs, calves. He looks as good as he did in the winter. The same amount of pale, though, despite the extra sun. “Do you want to go on a date?”

Kent’s eyes flicker open. They are a beautiful, deep blue today. The color of the eastern sky as the sun goes down. “Isn’t this a date?”

Jack shrugs. He guesses, but, “I want to take you out somewhere.”

“Dress me up and take me out?”

“Only if you want to,” Jack rushes to say, “but I’d like to.”

Kent’s eyes focus on Jack’s face. Jack watches them trace down from his eyes, over his nose, linger on his lips. Jack leans down and presses a quick kiss to Kent’s mouth. When Jack draws back, Kent’s lips have drawn up into a smile, eyes still closed from the kiss. Jack goes in for another one, and then waits for Kent’s eyes to open. They’re a lighter blue now.

“What are you thinking?” Kent wants to know.

“I was thinking lunch and a movie.”

“Not dinner and a movie?”

“So you can get back before nightfall.”

Kent’s eyes sparkle. “Okay then, lunch and a movie. Whatcha gonna cook for me?”

Jack’s stomach swoops. He didn’t think Kent would agree so quickly. Jack kisses Kent once more. “I was thinking we could go out, toward Montreal. I can drive.”

Jack catches Kent’s flicker of anger, hurt. “Jack,” Kent starts.

“No, seriously,” Jack interrupts before Kent makes up whatever excuse to turn him down. “Listen to me. It’s just for the day; we’ll have lunch, see a matinee, be back well before you have to go to work. Sun won’t even be sinking before we drive back.” Kent’s mouth curves down. Jack leans down for a kiss. Then another, and another, until the corners of Kent’s lips have turned up. “Think about it?” Jack dips down for another kiss, one that lasts longer, Kent opening his mouth for a breath against Jack’s. “Kent?” Kent hums his consent, and Jack rewards him with one more kiss, which isn’t even that good because Jack can’t stop smiling.

“Tomorrow?” Jack pushes for, drawing back to stare at his boyfriend, and Kent laughs.

“I need to get appropriate clothing.” Jack rolls his eyes, sitting back up. But Kent’s eyes start dancing. “Unless you want me in public as is?” Kent sweeps a hand from his chest on down. “Go see a movie just like this?”

Jack can’t help the way his eyes cling to Kent’s body now. Watches his abs clench, his thighs tense. Kent is definitely right. It wouldn’t go well for Jack if Kent goes out only in swim trunks. Plus, Jack doubts Kent could get into a movie theater without a shirt. “Okay,” Jack says dumbly instead of wondering too much about Kent implying he doesn’t even own a shirt. “Next Wednesday.”

“Next Wednesday,” Kent agrees. Kent sits up in the boat and his abs, well. Jack enjoys the view. “Wednesday,” Kent repeats, and then he stands in one elegant motion, turns, and hops off the boat, splashing water back onto Jack. Kent peeks up from the lake, smirks, quick and beautiful, and then disappears. Jack sits back, watching for Kent, even know Jack knows he won’t see him surface again. Jack grins suddenly, giddy. He can’t wait

 

On Wednesday, Kent lets himself into the cabin with his almost-dry hair combed down and in a pair of loud, salmon-colored shorts. He struts around the kitchen in a white polo that clings in all the right places. He looks great. He looks perfect.

Jack shifts in his khakis shorts and pulls at his blue shirt, loose on him until he puts on all the weight for next season. Jack’s mom told him it would bring out his eyes.

In comparison to Kent, Jack’s shirt doesn’t do anything for him. Fuck. Jack can’t help scraping his eyes over Kent again. “You look good.” Jack clears his throat, voice coming out too low. Kent always looks good, but something about seeing Kent wearing clothing other than his swim trunks. Well. It definitely does it for Jack.

Kent quirks a smile. “Let’s be real though, I’d look good in anything. And you…” Kent does a slow once over of Jack. Jack doesn’t move, breath lodged his chest and regrets scurrying through his thoughts. Jack should’ve gone with a shirt that fit him better, showed off his muscle definition, always best in the summer before he starts putting on weight. He shouldn’t have worried so much about matching his eye color—no matter what his mom said.

And even though they see each other all the time, and Kent knows how Jack looks in every situation. Jack wanted to dress up for Kent, show him how big of a deal this date was for Jack, for them, their relationship. They’re going out together. For the first time. Out in the open and in the wild and away from Nominingue, from Kent’s family. And Jack wanted to look good, take Kent’s breath away like Kent’s doing to him. He hopes he’s succeeding, pretty sure he is based on Kent’s scrutiny.

Kent draws his eyes back up to Jack’s face. “I like your hair that way.”

Jack absolutely flushes, glancing away from Kent’s eyes and to the floor and to, apparently, Kent’s feet. Which are bare. Jack opens and closes his mouth a few times. “Why don’t you have shoes?”

“What?”

Jack squints at Kent’s scrunched up face. “Shoes, Kent.”

“Well.” Kent scratches his head, biding his time to come up with an awful excuse.

Jack preempts the lie, heading to the back door of the cabin. Kent follows the few steps, and Jack toes at his lake shoes. “Wear my flip flops.”

A small grin spreads over Kent’s face. “You gave me a pair already.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, in the winter. You didn’t like when I walked in bare feet in the snow.”

Jack snorts. “So I gave you flip flops?”

Kent shrugs and slots his smaller feet into the shoes. “You were concussed.” Kent snatches Jack’s Falconer’s cap off the table and smashes it over his hair as they head out the front door. Jack rolls his eyes, and doesn’t tell Kent to put it back down. Or on the right way, brim forward. Jack just slides behind his truck’s steering wheel.

Kent fumbles with the handle of the truck, awkwardly opening the door. He teeters into the seat and then closes the door almost gently. Jack turns on the truck. It starts beeping at him. “You’ve got to close it again.”

“What?”

“Open the door, and then close it with, like, a bang.”

The minute Kent slams the door shut, the warning light flickering off, Jack reverses out of the driveway. Kent’s hands flash against the center console, the dashboard. Jack slams on the breaks. Kent doesn’t move, jaw tight. His breath comes short, hard.

“Kent?”

Kent draws his hands back. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Jack doesn’t lift his foot up from the break.

“Fucking drive, Jack.” Kent turns his head away, and Jack starts driving, but slow. The trees barely crawling and the wheels dipping into every rut and hole. Jack listens to Kent’s shaky inhales and exhales until he sounds like he normally does.

“I can swim fucking faster than this.” Kent twists and catches Jack’s eyes. Jack looks immediately to the road, taking the hint. He starts easing onto the gas. Their trip gets bumpy down the gravel. It smooths out on the pavement, and then they’re flying down 117.

Kent starts fiddling with everything in the car. He turns the fan way up and then all the way down. He bursts their ear drums on accident, messing with the radio. He tunes them through every single static-y channel, before settling on a pop station that goes in and out as they wind down to one of the suburbs Jack plugged into his phone.

“I’ve never been in a vehicle,” Kent finally admits in a tight voice, watching the trees race past them. “I knew they went fast, but it’s one thing to see and another to be actually going this fast. Fuck, I could never swim this fast.”

It startles a laugh out of Jack. “I couldn’t imagine anyone could do anything this fast without an engine.”

“Could you skate this fast?” Kent demands, eyes honed in on Jack. “If you had enough room and didn’t have to turn at all. Just going straight down a perfectly flat sheet of ice.”

Jack shakes his head, checking his mirrors. “No, no I couldn’t. Not even the fastest skater could.”

Kent sits back in his seat. “Wow.” He turns his head to look out the side window, something Jack can’t do or he gets sick.

Jack keeps his eyes on the horizon and shifts his hands a little on the steering wheel. “How come you’ve never been in a car before?”

Kent shrugs. “Just never needed to. Everything I needed I could get to, or someone in the family would go out.”

“So you’ve never been to Montreal either?”

Kent laughs. “No. I’ve definitely never been to Montreal before.”

“It’s a pretty big city.”

“I’ve fucking seen it on TV, you dipshit. I have eyes, and sometimes the internet.”

Jack can’t help smiling, looking over at Kent who looks quite pleased to have given Jack some shit. “We’re not going to go into the city though, just one of the suburbs. It’s like—”

“Are you shitting me?” Kent laughs. “I’ve seen the suburbs. Television can’t get enough of them. Wild teenagers in high school and noisy mothers with white picket fences.” Kent whips a grin at Jack, and Jack gives it right back. Kent settles more comfortably into the seat. Then he throws his feet up on the dashboard. Jack snaps at him to take them down.

“I fucking will not,” Kent says. “I’m getting my first full vehicle experience, which includes feet on the dash.”

“I don’t—”

“So anyway,” Kent blunders on, grin sweeping across his face, “this will be my first movie theater, too. What are we going to see?”

Jack tries to bat Kent’s feet off the dashboard, but Kent’s thighs are unforgiving steel to Jack’s weak, one-armed attempts. Jack usually appreciates Kent’s thighs more when they’re a vice grip around Jack, squeezing his torso, pulling him close.

Kent flicks at Jack’s forehead. “Earth to Jack.”

Jack clears his throat and plants his attention on the road. He starts telling Kent about their movie choices. Kent snorts and makes snide comments, and Jack fights back one smile after another. He never seems to win. It goes like that the rest of the drive, and then as they head into the restaurant. It isn’t packed enough that Jack needed to make reservations, but he did anyway. It’s a nice place, open and airy. They get an outside table on the small patio. Their seats are right next to each other and their view is the main street of the small town. Someone walks by with their dog, who scurries ahead and then loops back to its owner, easy as anything.

It’s nice, peaceful. They read through the menu, and Kent orders the fish, even though Jack tries to explain to him it will definitely not be as good as the fish they get in Nominingue. “You’re going to be very disappointed,” Jack says.

Kent shrugs. “I’ll just eat whatever you get then,” he says. Jack chooses the steak then, even though he was eyeing the fish, too. Jack wasn’t brought up with very discerning taste buds, even though Mom tried. Jack orders a beer, and Kent gets a cocktail Jack’s never heard of.

Kent praises his drink and disparages his fish, spitting it back onto his plate to Jack’s horror. Kent drowns what’s left of his cocktail and then orders another one. With one long glance at Jack, Kent starts stealing bites of steak away from Jack as if daring Jack to stop him.

Jack doesn’t try. “I told you you’d hate the fish.”

When Kent orders a third drink, Jack takes a second beer. Kent pulls Jack’s entire plate toward him. Jack snags Kent’s barely touched fish. He slides the chewed-up, spit-back-out piece to the very side before starting in. It’s actually pretty good.

They get the check not long after and walk down main street to kill time before the movie starts. Jack’s hand itches to take Kent’s, and he flexes it. He doesn’t know how Kent would feel about it, figures he should just give it a go, but…

Two little girls recognize Jack on the street. Jack heart sinks as they shriek. One runs ahead, halting inches before Jack and Kent, and Jack tucks his hands into his pockets. The mom comes up wearily, apologizes. The girl asks for a photo, and how could Jack refuse. He kneels down, the girl clamoring to his side and demanding her sister join her. Jack glances up at Kent, and he’s stepped away, well out of the picture frame. But he doesn’t look like he minds, crinkles at the edge of his eyes.

Jack turns back to the camera, smiles. “Thank you,” the mom says, putting away her phone, and the girls echo her, hair swinging, eyes bright. Jack nods, starts to lift a hand to wave goodbye.

“Can you get a picture of us together?” Kent blurts out.

Jack freezes, Kent a good meter away from him. Kent bites his lip, and Jack looks quickly to the mom. She stares and then starts nodding. “Sure,” she says. “I just. Your phone?” One girl has wrapped her arms around the mom’s right leg.

“Jack,” Kent says. “Your phone.”

“Right.” Jack fumbles his phone from his pocket. It takes two tries for him to pull up the camera, passing it over to the mom’s outstretched hand. When Kent doesn’t move closer, Jack reaches out. Jack wants to tangle their fingers together, wants to pull Kent in for a kiss. Doesn’t do either. Jack grasps Kent’s wrist and tugs him in that way. Jack slings his arm around Kent’s shoulder, but Kent’s arm goes around his waist. Intimate, and Jack. Jack leans into the touch, lowers his arm until his arm rests on Kent’s lower back, tugs him in closer.

The mom switches the phone to horizontal. “One more,” she says and then lowers the phone.

Jack steps away from Kent, taking his phone back. She says goodbye, tugging her kids away, and Kent leans back into Jack’s space.

“How do we look?” Jack flicks through the three photos she took. Jack’s eyes are closed in one, but the horizontal photo looks good. Jack likes seeing the tips of Kent’s fingers curl around Jack’s side. “You’ll have to print that out and laminate it for me or something.”

Jack whips his head up, nearly colliding with Kent. “You want a copy?”

“I asked for the photo, didn’t I?”

Jack nods jerkily, jamming his phone back into his pocket. Kent reaches out and grabs Jack’s hand, twining their fingers together. Jack bites the inside of his cheek and starts tugging Kent toward the movie theater, a few blocks away. Jack can make it a few blocks.

 

Ridiculously expensive popcorn in hand, Kent leads them to the very center of the back row. “So we can make out like horny teenagers if the movie’s shit,” Kent explains. “I saw it in some films.”

The movie is shit, even though Jack didn’t except it would be. They do make out like horny teenagers.

On the drive back, Kent keeps glancing at Jack, and Jack keeps looking back. He can’t help himself. He’s been half hard since the movie theater. He wants to pull the truck over right then and there. Just off the main road far enough and put his mouth all over Kent’s skin, slide his hands over Kent’s strong body. He wants to feel Kent flex beneath him and come apart at his touch. He wants—

“I’m going to have to head out right after we get back,” Kent interrupts, voice tight, eyes on the sun. Jack feels like he’s been punched. The sun isn’t even setting yet. Kent looks to Jack and then away. Oh. Jack stomach turns over. He thought Kent was sneaking looks because...

Jack tightens his hands on the wheel. “Okay.” Jack stops watching Kent out of the corner of his eye. Focuses on the road. That’ll be better. So he doesn’t. Jack doesn’t want Kent to go. He wants Kent to stay over and sleep next him. And Jack wants Kent to wake up in his arms. Jack wants them to have lazy sex as the sun comes up. And he wants to photograph Kent pooled in the sheets, back and legs bare. Jack wants. Jack wants to ask Kent to stay.

Jack wants to ask for an explanation, a better one than Jack knows he’s fabricated in his mind: work, family, emergencies, superstition. But fuck, Jack knows Kent won’t give him any. Won’t switch his plans for the night. Not for Jack at least. So when Jack pulls the truck up next to the cabin, he lets Kent go.

“I’ll drop by around noon,” Kent promises, slipping through the cabin, out the porch door. He sprints to the lake. Jack watching out the kitchen window as Kent hits the dock, springing into the water, completely clothed. He doesn’t come up for air.

Jack closes his eyes. Tells himself it’s okay, everything is fine. Jack makes dinner, eats, tries to read. Goes to bed. Jack peels his clothing off mechanically: shirt, shorts, boxers, socks. With Kent he’d have undressed frantically. Not sure whether to take off his own clothes or Kent’s. Which ones to remove first.

Jack almost unlocks his phone, almost deletes the pictures off it. But Kent asked for a copy. Not that Jack knows where to print anything here. Not that Jack can just text him the photo. Jack texts it to his parents instead, writing, “We saw a movie today.” Jack closes his eyes, and even when his phone chimes with a response, he doesn’t look at it.

 

Jack doesn’t mean to be short with Kent the next day, because everything was great about yesterday except the end. But Jack can’t not be. He wants something more. He wants so much more. He tells Kent this, screams it at him.

“Jack,” Kent says softly, and he puts his hand against Jack’s cheek. Jack pulls back. He can’t believe he’s so worked up about this. He knew Kent would react like this, that this would be their relationship. Jack wishes he wasn’t so attached. So in love. Kent, Jack bets as he turns away and heads to his room, doesn’t actually want a relationship. Just something that fits conveniently around his work hours, around his life.

Jack slams the bedroom door. He shoves at the TV, kicks at the nightstand. He drops onto the bed. Exhausted, tired, hurting. Jack glares at the ceiling.

Kent comes in, sits on the side of Jack’s bed. The mattress sinks in his direction, the springs creaking. “I’m sorry,” Kent says.

Jack doesn’t say that if Kent was truly sorry, he’d fix it. He’d find a way to make it work. He’d find a way to stay over and to love Jack like Jack loves Kent. Instead, Jack squeezes his eyes shut and waits for Kent to leave. He has to eventually—eventually the sun will go down, and like clockwork, Kent won’t be there anymore.

Kent leaves.

The sun sets.

Jack doesn’t see Kent for three days. He wakes up and Kent isn’t there. He goes through his morning workout routine. Kent doesn’t show up. Jack goes out on his boat. Kent isn’t there. He isn’t even there in the evening, when he sometimes shows up, spiraling through the water and refusing to leave it for Jack’s boat, his cabin.

 

Jack goes out later the next night with his camera, feeling restless. It’s a new moon, good time for pictures of the stars. He sets up a tripod, sets the shutter speed slow and tilts his head up to the sky. His camera clicks. Jack shifts its frame a little, and then he resets it. Jack listens to the crickets, and he listens to the water lap against his dock, the shore.

If Jack listens closely, he can hear a car zip through the night every few moments, all the way across the lake near the highway. He can hear a family talking loudly around a campfire. He can hear fish jump and fall into the water, and if Jack holds his breath, he almost imagines he can hear a bubble of conversation from the depths of the water, laughter and cheer and arguments.

Jack’s camera clicks, and Jack resets it. He goes back to listening, but now Jack can’t hear anything except the rush of blood in his own ears, except his voice yelling at Kent, except for Kent’s soft breath as he waited on the edge of the bed for Jack to apologize. Jack should’ve.

Jack goes inside after three more photos. He’ll choose one to share with his parents later, with his friends later. With everyone Jack hasn’t kept in contact with over the summer, because his time was so eaten up by Kent.

Kent this, Kent that, Kent everything.

Jack sleeps, and when he wakes up, he’s still alone. There’s no Kent padding around the cabin like it’s his own, making coffee, cooking fish, complaining about the temperature of the lake water in a way he never does about the weather.

Jack just… Jack does his morning workout. He walks down to the grocery to buy what he needs. He walks back, cooks lunch. He goes out onto the boat. He sets up his fishing pole, thinking maybe Kent would see it and come back, would tug on the line until Jack started reeling, would fling himself onto the deck and say some cheesy line. Jack doesn’t get a single bite. He tries to read and ends up mostly watching the trees drift by. He keeps the motor idling. It’s beautiful. The lake in summer: vibrant and thriving.

Jack goes back to the dock, feeling calmer, more centered. He flicks through his photos from the night before on the porch and sends the one he likes best to his parents and Snowy. He shares one that turned out blurry to Tater. And then, before Jack can talk himself out of it, he sends Tater the picture of Kent and him together, too. “This is Kent,” Jack writes, and then shuts off his phone for the rest of the day.

 

On the fifth day without Kent, Jack aches. He wants Kent back. Jack misses him, misses everything about Kent. Jack doesn’t know how to get Kent back when he hasn’t seen him anywhere, doesn’t know how to contact him, doesn’t know where Kent lives.

Jack finally just pushes his boat out as the sun starts to set, to the place where he’d met Kent time and time again. Jack waits for a while, and then, like he did his first night back, he calls softly over the water, “Kent?” Jack chases his eyes around the surface of the lake, searching for that telltale sign of Kent’s blonde head, but Jack sees nothing. “Kent?” he tries again, and still nothing. After an hour, Jack goes back inside. Tomorrow, Jack tells himself, he’s going to try again tomorrow.

Jack tries for a week straight, and then on the ninth day, Kent’s head pops out of the water. “Jack?” he sounds hesitant and unsure and nothing at all like himself.

“Kent,” Jack says, and can’t help the way he voice breaks in relief. He feels like he’s been waiting forever to hear Kent again, has missed him for so long. It wasn’t like when Jack was gone for the winter. Then, he knew he’d come back here, that Kent would still be here, because they told each other they would see each other again. Jack wasn’t sure about this, that Kent would come back.

“Hey,” Kent says, and he swims closer. His hands clutch the side of the boat.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says. He’s apologizing for a lot in there, but mostly for asking Kent, repeatedly, for more than he could give, than he wanted to give. Jack should know better, about not demanding more from a person than they were willing to share. People did that to him a lot, the press did it to him all the time, random strangers on the street. Jack shouldn’t have done it to Kent, should never do it again.

“It’s fine,” Kent says.

“Are you free?” Jack asks. “Just to swim for a bit?”

Kent pulls himself up to his pose, forearms rest on the side of the boat, his chin jutting out on top of them. “I could make some time for you.”

“Yeah?” Jack asks, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, but doubts he manages to.

“Course,” Kent says, and Jack strips down to his boxers before sliding into the chilly water next to Kent. Jack’s eyes flick down to Kent’s lips, but he doesn’t close the distance. Jack looks into Kent’s eyes, and it’s too dark to see the color, but Jack imagines they’re a beautiful deep green now, filled with life. Kent leans in hesitantly then, barely a centimeter, and then he closes the space between them. The kiss is chaste at first, a brush of Kent’s lips against Jack’s, but then Kent deepens it, opens his mouth. Jack presses forward, one arm on the side of the boat to keep him up. It lasts forever, it lasts only a moment, when Kent pulls away, dipping his forehead to touch Jack’s.

“I’ve missed you,” Kent admits, and Jack’s heart flutters. Kent must know how much Jack missed him, how many times Jack came out here looking for Kent, hoping to see him again. Then Kent draws back slowly, almost like he’s afraid he’ll startle Jack. Jack chases after him, and pretty soon they’re racing, like they did in the beginning, Kent always a hair ahead of Jack. Jack unable to catch him, hold him, touch him. Kent fast and swift in the water, like he was born for it, born in it.

When Jack gets too tired, Kent helps propel him up and into the boat. Jack laughs, he hasn’t moved like that in the water with Kent for a while, for too long. Jack quiets, and Kent does, too. Jack closes his eyes and he can hear his own breath and Kent’s. He hears the insects and the water and—”Sometimes,” Jack says, “I think I hear an entire city underneath the water.”

Kent doesn’t say anything. Jack cracks an eye open and turns to stare at Kent.

“What?” he prompts when Kent doesn’t say anything.

Kent shakes his head. “Nothing. You better get back before you pass out,” Kent tells Jack. “See you tomorrow. Same time, same place.”

It’s on the tip of Jack’s tongue to invite Kent back with him, but he knows what that outcome would be. So he doesn’t. He sits up and turns the motor back on, returning to his place alone.

Jack goes out the next day, the night just turning over. Jack tumbles over the side as soon as Kent appears, and they trade lazy kisses, sometimes treading water, sometimes holding onto the boat.

Kent reaches out and grabs Jack’s right hand, speaks into his mouth. “I want to swim,” he says between kisses. “With you. Let’s swim together.” Kent tightens his grip on Jack. “Let’s go.”

Jack pulls far enough away to take in Kent’s whole face. Jack wants another kiss. They swim all the time. “Deep breath,” Kent commands. Jack laughs, though obliges. Kent doesn’t tug Jack out from the boat on the surface of the lake. Kent pulls him down.

Kent dives deep into the water, hand a vice around Jack’s. Water surges over Jack’s head, the lake swallowing him down. It steals his sight. Water rushes against his open, useless eyes. Kent drags Jack quickly, powerfully down into the lake. It mutes the night air, and Jack’s pulse thuds in his ears, through his body. And he hears.

He hears Kent speak next to him. The clicking rises from the back of his throat. The sound carries through the water, spins around Jack’s body. A high pitched note slides between the clicks. Until, until maybe Kent is singing. Jack looks over, but he can’t see Kent at all. No light penetrates this far. The water chokes off the moon, the stars.

Jack traps down panic in his throat, threatening to fill his lungs and push out air. He tightens his grip on Kent’s hand. Jack isn’t positive which way is up. His legs are kicking though, pushing him through the water, with Kent, next to Kent, who pulls him farther and farther. Jack has to trust Kent knows where they’re going. How long they can swim for. Which way is up, which way is down.

The moment Jack’s lungs begin to burst, he tugs Kent, aiming to head for the surface. Instead Kent presses close enough for Jack to see his eyes, swallowed completely by black. Kent can see down here, Jack realizes, and then Kent’s kissing him, a high pitch whine singing from the back of Kent’s throat. Kent opens his mouth, and Jack unconsciously follows his lead. Instead of water rushing into Jack, air does. Greedily, instinctively, Jack takes it in. Kent seals his lips together, and Jack’s follow the movement.

Kent pulls back, fades into darkness, and they dive deeper. Jack’s ears pop, and Kent drags him down until their linked hands brush against sand, plants tangled around one another. The bottom of the lake. Jack’s other hand reaches forward. His fingers dig into the soft ground, wrap around a rock. Jack clutches it tight, pressing it into his skin.

Kent pulls Jack close, one last kiss, one last puff of air, and then they’re spiraling to the surface. Water rushes past Jack’s ears. Laughter and voices, like Kent’s and his sisters’, circle around Jack, urging him upward. Hand-in-hand, Jack and Kent launch into the air, and for one moment, Jack’s body is above the water. He gasps in air. The night sings with insects and rustling leaves. Jack slams back into the water, his hand losing Kent’s. Jack gulps in water, sputtering back to the surface. He struggles to stay afloat for a panicking moment, coughing and sputtering. But then it’s fine. He regains his breath, manages to swim.

Jack looks around for Kent, the boat, anything. But Jack doesn’t recognize where in the lake he is. Far away from the boat, is all Jack can determine. In one breath, in one dive. Kent emerges then, the moon barely able to outline him.

“Hey,” Kent says, a grin dancing around his face, teeth too sharp, skin too pale, pupils too wide.

Jack back peddles as well as he can, but Kent moves closer quicker.

“What did you think?” Kent asks, voice layered in those clicks, distorting the syllables, cutting them in half. A sharp ringing lurches from Kent’s mouth into the air.

Panic starts to set in. How trapped Jack was under the water. How Kent forced Jack down there. Only able to breathe because of Kent. No other oxygen. No other way. Not even knowing which way was up, where the sky was, the moon, the surface. Jack’s arms thrash in the water. But somehow he starts sinking, legs not paddling enough water to keep him afloat. Jack swallows down hiccuping breaths, water rocking into his mouth as he dips lower, his chin falling under the water line. Jack kicks harder. His hands clench tighter. He tips his head back, spits out what water had flooded his mouth. Jack can’t go back under the water. He can’t. He shakes his head, can’t get any words out.

“Okay,” Kent says, and his voice comes out steady and even, and Jack sucks in a longer breath. Matching Kent’s unshakeable resolve. His unflappable tone. No more clicks. No more ringing. Jack thinks his eyes must’ve been misleading on him. His ears too. Kent looks normal now. He sounds normal. Human. Not. Not whatever that was. Not whatever Jack had seen, felt, heard. He looks like the Kent Jack has come to know over the past two summers. He sounds like himself, acts like himself. Kent. Just Kent. Jack sucks in one more breath, two. “Let’s go get you onto some stable land.” Kent reaches for Jack, and Jack doesn’t mean to flinch, but he does. His lungs tightening like they had underwater. “We need to swim back to shore,” Kent says, and only then does Jack let Kent take his hand.

But when Kent begins to drop, Jack lets go. Jack keeps his head above the water. He’s not doing that again. Not now. Not now that he can breathe on his own volition, can see beyond his own palm. Not now when everything sounds right.

Kent returns to the surface, and he looks at Jack, says, “Please.”

Jack shakes his head, picks the shore that looks closest and starts swimming. “I’m not doing that again.”

“But—”

“No,” Jack says, lengthening his stroke, kicking his legs, moving away from Kent. Jack just needs to reach shore. Just needs to get back to his cabin. Kent emerges out of the water in front of him. Jack curses, turns away.

“Wrong direction,” Kent says.

“Then which fucking direction is it!?” Jack shouts. His voice echoes over the water, off the trees. The bugs go quiet. A bird frantically takes to the air. Jack bites his lip to keep from apologizing.

“This way,” Kent says, and he reaches for Jack again. Jack pulls back. Kent moves in closer, Jack doesn’t have energy to move away again. He turns his head, looks off across the bay. He can feel Kent’s breath on his cheek. “Jack—”

“Kent,” Jack snaps, ignoring Kent, the warmth of him in the cool water. Kent stills, and then he drifts away. Jack closes his eyes, fists clenched, takes a hiccuping breath.

“This way.” Kent swims, staying above the surface, and Jack follows, arms aching, legs on the verge of cramping. It doesn’t take as long to get to the boat as Jack thought it would, but he’s not certain where they are, which way is back to the cabin.

He doesn’t tell Kent this, simply pulls himself into the boat, not looking at Kent. His friend. His lover. His boyfriend.

Kent pauses on the edge of the boat. Jack has his hand on the motor. “I’ll lead,” Kent says. “Just follow me back.” Jack wants to lie and say he knows which way to go. He tightens his jaw instead, nods. Doesn’t say it would be easier if Kent came into the boat and gave directions from there. Doesn’t say it would be easier if Kent didn’t drag Jack down, down so far his lungs almost burst as his fingers brushed the bottom of the Lake of Great Bays.

Eyes wide in the darkness, Jack turns on the motor and steers after Kent. Sometimes Kent disappears into the lake. But never for too long. He always resurfaces, turning his head to check Jack is still following.

It doesn’t take long before the dock is in sight, and then Jack heads straight for it. He hears Kent call his name, but Jack keeps going. He’s not. He can’t. Not tonight. Not with frigid lake water drying to his skin in the night air, his breath starting to come too fast the longer he thinks about underwater, Kent slotting their lips together to push air into Jack’s lungs or else. Or else Jack would’ve died. Drowned.

Jack stumbles inside, not remembering whether he tied up the boat, and only then does he realize his left hand is still clenched in a fist. The rock from the lake’s bottom in his hand. Jack uncurls his fingers slowly, wincing. He plucks the dark stone from his palm, smooth all over. He takes the rock between his thumb and index finger, and when he turns it just the right way, the light catches. It shines then, looking almost silver.

Jack deposits the rock on the kitchen table. Takes a shower. Goes to sleep.

Jack wakes up, body aching. He drags on sweatpants and a shirt, almost thinking yesterday was a dream. The dive into the water. Swimming down deeper and deeper. The sound filling up Jack’s ears alongside his own pulse. Kent, the color in his eyes completely gone, moving air from his to Jack’s lungs so they could go farther and farther. Jack scraping his hands against the bottom of the lake. Down at least 200 meters. Rocketing to the surface, exploding out of the water.

But then on the kitchen table is the rock from the bottom of the lake. Jack flexes his left hand, the one that had carried it, clutched it all the way back to the cabin.

He makes eggs for breakfast and eats them at the table, staring at the rock. It doesn’t look special. More of an ugly pebble than anything else. It doesn’t look like Jack somehow dived through hundreds of meters of water for it, tugged down into the pitch black by Kent. Jack picks the rock up, twists it back and forth. Nothing exciting. No silver like he thought he saw last night.

The porch door squeaks. Jack clatters to his feet and takes the four steps into the living room, watching Kent coming in off the porch. He has on his swim trunks. Blue-gray rims Kent’s pupils and underneath his eyes ride dark circles. He looks only as pale as Jack. “Hey,” Kent says, grinning wide, though it looks forced. Kent sounds normal, too. No chattering far back in his throat, no note humming through the air.

Jack nods, but doesn’t move closer, wrapping his fingers around the rock, hiding it from view.

Kent clears his throat and steps forward, straightening his shoulders. “Whatcha got there?” he asks. He moves with a faked ease into Jack’s cabin. Like he belongs here. And he—

Even just a day ago Jack would’ve said Kent does. Belong here that is, but Jack doesn’t know anymore. He keeps feeling the water closing in, seeing Kent sickly pale and teeth jagged at the ends.

Kent’s hand wraps around Jack’s, the one with the stone. “Let me see,” says Kent, and Jack does. He unwraps his fingers from around the cool rock, and Kent stares at it. He reaches down, plucks the black stone from Jack’s palm and turns it over. It illuminates with Kent’s touch. Turns to silver. Jack tears his eyes away from the stone to Kent’s face.

Jack can’t decipher Kent’s look before he replaces the rock to Jack’s palm. It turns back to black. “Keep it safe.”

“Why?” Jack asks, but he curls his fingers around it anyway.

“You’ll need it if you want to meet the rest of my family,” Kent says. It almost sounds like an offer, and Jack jerks his gaze up to Kent’s eyes. They’re a brilliant green Jack hasn’t seen before. “If you still want to. If my sisters didn’t drive you away.”

Jack barely remembers meeting Kent’s sisters at this point. The beginning of summer, before their date, before Kent dragged Jack down and down—Jack shakes his head, pockets the stone. It doesn’t make sense, why Jack needs a rock to meet the rest of Kent’s family. It seems like a question Kent won’t answer though, so Jack just nods, says, “Yeah. Okay.”

Kent shifts, and Jack moves aside, letting Kent into the kitchen.“I was going to clean up and then go workout,” Jack says, hand on the back of his neck.

“I’ll be here,” Kent responds. And he is. When Jack finishes up, Kent is playing video games, and Jack joins him. They’re both still awful at it. When Kent turns to go, he hesitates, before leaning in, kissing Jack.

“Don’t lose the stone,” Kent repeats. Jack nods, watches him go, dive into the water like he belongs there, was born there.

Jack can’t sleep. Tries it for a while, laying down in bed and staring at the ceiling. He tries an audiobook. He gets up, pulls out his camera, lugging it and his tripod out onto the porch. The full moon looms large, hanging perfectly over the lake. It reflects in the water and it reflects the trees. Jack sits on the edge of his dock, aperture wide. He does his best to capture the landscape as he sees it. He hears fish jump in the water and he hears the mutter of the lake.

Jack clicks his photos until his eyes barely stay open, the moon now well behind the trees. He’ll send one of the photos to his mom tomorrow. She likes the night pictures.

When Jack sleeps, he dreams of him and Kent flying through the water, holding hands and kissing and diving under fish that swim into their lane.

The next morning, Jack works out. He comes inside sweaty and showers before cooking eggs. He sets his camera up in front of him at the kitchen table, flipping through the photos from last night as he eats. He pauses on one particular shot that catches a few fish jumping. Jack chortles. Of course he can’t catch any on his fishing pole, but he can catch them with his camera.

Jack zooms in on the fish to see them a little better, and his heart stops. Because there’s Kent, surrounded by the blur of water. In the photo, Kent arches gracefully through the air, jumping above the lake. The full moon lights his face and hair, both whiter than Jack’s ever seen before, and the splash from the water hides only the very end of his tail.

Very carefully, Jack leans back in his chair.

It would certainly explain a lot if Kent was a merman.

The porch door swings open. Jack looks up to Kent, grinning as he comes into the cabin, a little unsteady on his feet. 


	5. mermaid dates

“I want to see it,” Jack blurts out. Kent raises an eyebrow as he pulls a Gatorade out of the refrigerator. Kent unscrews the lid, takes a sip. Jack shuts off his camera and clears his throat. “I want to see your tail.”

Kent jerks, almost spilling, then nods, a sharp jerk of his head.

Jack swallows, doesn’t know what else to say, now that it’s out there. He straightens up in his chair when Kent finally turns fully toward him. Jack opens his mouth to say something, anything, suddenly desperate to break the silence.

Kent does it for him. “How long have you known for?” Kent puts the Gatorade down on the table, but doesn’t take the seat opposite Jack. He addresses the space off to the side of Jack’s head. “I’m guessing at least since the end of the winter. I know you were concussed, but I was swimming in the lake then. I just—I wasn’t going to say anything until you said something, because I didn’t want—” Kent cuts himself off.

Jack flushes. “Today,” he admits. “I realized this morning.” Kent’s eyes jerk to Jack, and Jack squirms in his chair, face going even hotter. In his defense, “Mermaids aren’t real.” Despite evidence to the contrary on his camera and, supposedly, in front of his eyes.

Kent laughs once, shocked. Then he keeps going. Jack can’t help but join in because wow. Looking back at everything. How elegantly Kent swims, how he always goes back to the water. And his sisters. Fuck, his sisters—Jack sucks in a sharp breath, cutting off his laughter. Kent shuts up not a second later. “Jack—?”

“Were your sisters trying to drown me?”

Kent looks away, sets the Gatorade on the counter. “It’s complicated.”

Ice runs down Jack’s spine, chilling the heat of his embarrassed flush. Not a, “No.” Not a, “Definitely not, Jack.” Not a, “No they weren’t trying to drown you.” Jack can’t help lunging to his feet, chair clattering. “What do you mean, ‘It’s complicated?’ They either were or they weren’t—”

“It’s not so cut and dry—”

“Do you eat humans?” Jack can’t breathe after he says the words. He tries to remember all the non-Disney mermaid stories he knows, but he’s coming up blank. But the only reason Kent’s sister could possibly be trying to drown him would be to kill him and then eat him. Right? Jack feels a little like he’s going crazy. Kent wouldn’t just drown someone for fun. There would have to be some purpose, some reason.

“What the fuck? No!” Kent looks outraged, disgusted. Jack’s shoulders slump, takes a shuddering breath.

“Okay,” Jack says. He drops back into the chair. “That’s good. You don’t understand how good that makes me feel.”

“I can’t believe you think I eat humans. You know what I eat. We’ve eaten together. Multiple times.” Jack starts nodding to himself, because Kent’s right. Of course he is. Kent eats fish and chicken and pork. He even eats fruits and vegetables. They cooked spaghetti together a few times to. Carbs, Kent eats carbs. “A lot of times. I just…” Kent trails off. “We don’t kill humans,” he finally ends with.

“Right,” Jack says. They stare not quite at each other, and then Jack reaches a hand forward across the table, palm up. Kent doesn’t hesitate before meeting Jack halfway, immediately threading their fingers together. Jack lets out a sigh, tension slipping out of him.

“So what do you want to know?” Kent asks. “Besides the tail?” Jack shrugs, focusing on their linked hands. Kent looks so human, feels so human. “Fuck,” Kent says with a chuckle under his breath. Jack jerks his head up to Kent grinning. “I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out until this morning.”

 

 

Kent takes Jack to his house. Or, it’s not his house exactly, but it’s the family’s house, but it’s more of a school. A place to learn how to be human. It’s a little bigger than Jack’s cabin. It has a front and back porch, just like his, a kitchen and a family room. But there are three bedrooms, two bathrooms. It doesn’t have a lot of stuff in it. No pictures.

“No one’s in right now,” Kent explains. “We usually sleep during the day.”

“You’re nocturnal.” Jack sees the flipflops he gave Kent next to the door, the place Jack keeps his own shoes in the cabin. The sweatpants with Jack’s number on them are crumpled on the kitchen table. There’s only one chair and the sweater Kent wore during the winter is hung on it.

“Not exactly.”

Jack peeks into one of the bedrooms. There’s a bedframe and a mattress without any pillows. Just a blanket spread out. It’s one Jack used to have and thought he’d lost.

“It’s easier to swim uninterrupted at night. Easier to catch fish, too. Easier to avoid humans. So that’s what we do.”

They go out on the back porch and Kent drops down onto the few steps that lead to the lake. There’s no chair, so Jack joins him. Their thighs press against one another. Kent hesitates and then drops a hand onto Jack’s leg, right above his knee. Jack covers it, and they stay like that for a moment, a soft breeze coming in off the lake.

“I practiced walking here almost every day that summer, before I went into the cabin with you for the first time.” Jack turns to look at Kent, but he’s looking out onto the lake, watching the ripples. Jack wonders if any of the movements are Kent’s siblings. Kent laughs, and Jack can’t help but turn back to look at Kent, the lake colors reflected in his eyes. “I was so afraid I was going to fall flat on my face.”

“But you didn’t,” Jack says. Kent wobbled and stumbled, but he didn’t fall.

Kent shakes his head. “But it was a near thing. So I practiced in the winter. I was going back home when you saw me.”

Jack remembers, even through the hazy memories, his blinding panic at Kent dropping under the ice, skin bare. Jack doesn’t mean to shiver, but it travels down his body, memories of the cold and pain. He can’t remember if he vomited trying to reach Kent, but he probably did.

“Tried to watch the ice hockey games to figure out who you were. You’d mentioned you played that first summer. Kim, who you met, she always liked hockey, but they don’t air Falconers games a lot, wrong area to get them.”

“You watched me play?” Jack asks, and he licks his lips. Kent turns his head then, and they’re so close to one another. Jack just needs to lean in a little. Just a hair. Just… Kent closes the gap between them, the way he always does, and presses their lips together. It’s a bad kiss. Jack can’t help smiling against Kent’s lips instead of properly kissing him.

 

 

Jack sits at the edge of the water as Kent walks farther and farther into the lake, until he’s swimming. He looks so at ease, in a way he never did on land, on his feet. “Not going to come in?” Kent asks.

Jack shakes his head. Swimming in the lake still sends a shock of fear through him, but Jack doesn’t know how to explain it to Kent, when they’ve gone in the water all those other times, swam together for summers. It’s just. Jack needs some time before he can get back in the lake with Kent, touch him in the water, not think of drowning, not feel the water tugging him down, closing over him, taking away his senses, his breath.

Kent gets a look in his eye though, like he might understand.

“So when do I get to see the tail?” Jack asks before Kent says anything more about swimming.

“Now, I guess,” Kent says, diving under the water. A moment later he flicks his tail out onto the air. It’s a dark, dark green. If it weren’t for the sun, it would look black. Kent resurfaces, his tail slipping below the water. Kent’s eyes are black and his skin sickly pale. Jack can see the blue of his veins. Kent grins, teeth sharp. “Can go back and forth during the day. Sun down forces me into the tail.”

Jack swallows and takes a step into the water. Just a step, the water wrapping around his ankle. Kent slips forward, and the closer he gets, the more the water falls away from his body. He stops an arm’s length away, and Jack can see along Kent’s bare back, muscles flexing as he shifts closer. The white of Kent’s skin starts to darken where his hip bones are, scales erupting a little further down, glinting in the sun. Jack crouches down, reaching for Kent.

Kent slips his hand into Jack’s, Kent’s fingers spindly and nails sharp. “What do you think?” Kent asks, his throat clicking between the words. Kent moves his body horizontal, and Jack’s fingers trail over Kent’s back, down over the scales, wrap around the edge of his tailfin. Jack grips it for a moment, and then the scales disappear, replaced by Kent’s foot, skin a healthier color than before.

“Either way works,” Jack decides. “It’s still you.”

 

 

Kent doesn’t stay the nights, but Jack understands now. Without the water at night, Kent dries out, dies.

 

 

Jack starts to swim a little on his own, never when Kent’s around, but. Soon.

 

 

Kent hands onto the side of the dock as Jack sets up his camera. It’s a new moon with a cloudless sky. Jack lays flat on his back, staring at the stars as his camera’s mirror flicks up and down every few minutes. Kent laughs right by his ear, and they talk about nothing.

Then Kent says, “Be quiet. Listen.”

Jack does.

“Quieter,” Kent whispers, lips right by Jack’s ear, and Jack stops breathing. Kent does, too.

Beneath the soft lap of the lake, between the crying of cicadas, Jack hears the murmur he’s heard before. He listens longer, and he hears laughter. A series of soft clicks rise from the lake, high-pitched notes twisting around them. Jack closes his eyes. It’s Kent’s family, Jack understands now. Others like him. And Kent starts to speak. Jack can’t understand a word, but at the end, Kent translates for him, “I love you.”

Jack draws in his first breath in a long time. “I love you, too,” he says back. First in French and then in English.

“It’s so sexy,” Kent mutters directly into his ear, “that we can both speak two languages.”

  
They’re lying on Jack’s bed, the windows wide open even though it’s pouring outside. Kent likes the sound. Jack doesn’t mind it.

“Are you ever going to be able to leave here?” Jack rolls to face Kent, dragging a hand over Kent’s pale stomach. “Nominingue?”

“I don’t know,” Kent confesses. “When the sun sets…” Kent switches to his side, mirroring Jack’s pose. “I want to go with you.”

“You could sleep in a bathtub,” Jack suggests, maybe too earnestly, because Kent laughs.

“That sounds incredibly uncomfortable.”

“I’d build you a big, comfy bathtub. We could even put some fish in it so it feels like home.”

Kent grins.

“I want you with me,” Jack confesses.

Kent’s smile turns soft. He touches his hand to Jack’s cheek. “Me too.”

 

 

Kent’s waiting patiently while Jack gets up the courage to slip over the side of the boat, into the waters they first met in. When Jack finally does, the cold water shocks his system. Kent stays carefully back. Jack splashes him. Kent dodges and slips closer.

Jack reaches out for Kent, and holds his breath. He expects the panic, and he swallows it down, clenching his eyes closed.

“Good job,” Kent says. Jack opens his eyes, and Kent kisses him once, quick.

 

 

  
Jack tells Kent he only has a couple of weeks left before he needs to leave for hockey. The temperatures have started to drop. Jack wears long sleeves at night. Kent only sometimes wears his swim trunks now.

“Right,” Kent says.

“And I’ve been thinking,” Jack hedges, their legs entwined together, Kent lying on top of Jack on the couch. “I’m still trying to figure out how we can travel, but I can get you a cell phone. They’re waterproof now. To stay in touch over the season.”

Kent hums. Jack feels the vibration all the way along his body.

“It’s not perfect,” Jack says.

“It’s a good start.”

 

 

  
Jack leaves tomorrow, and tonight he’ll meet Kent’s family, all of them. Jack curls his fingers tighter around the stone, waiting for Kent at the edge of the water. Kent didn’t give a lot of direction, told him they would need to go underwater, that Jack would need the stone.

Jack takes in a deep breath, tries to calm down his racing heart. It doesn’t help much.

Kent pops up a meter away. He swims a little closer to the shore, but doesn’t come all the way to Jack. It’s hard to be out of the water with the tail. Jack walks out to Kent, and together they move farther into the lake until Jack’s treading water.

“You have the rock?” Kent asks, and Jack nods, puts it in Kent’s hand.

Kent reaches up between them, stone in hand. His knuckles brush against Jack’s lips. “Open,” he tells Jack. Jack hesitates before doing so. Kent slips the rock inside Jack’s mouth. “Close,” Kent whispers, and Jack does, the stone heavy on his tongue. It tastes like the air after it rains. Jack breathes in through his nose, keeping his mouth closed. “We’re going to test it out,” Kent tells Jack. “Right underneath the water. You’re going to breathe through your mouth without opening your mouth, okay?”

Jack keeps his jaw tightly clamped or he’d tell Kent, “No, no that does not sound good.”

Instead they go under the water, Kent’s hands against his shoulders, fingers brushing his neck, keeping Jack under, keeping him close. They’re close enough to the surface and the moonlight that Jack can watch as Kent’s pupils expand and his skin turns white. A sharp click drops out of Kent’s throat. Breathe, Jack imagines Kent saying, and Jack does.

Air floods Jack’s lungs, the rock slipping into the corner of his mouth.

A rumble vibrates out of Kent’s chest. Jack tips his forehead against Kent’s, breathing. Kent’s hands slide up to Jack’s cheeks. Jack reaches up and grasps onto Kent’s left hand. He squeezes once, and then Kent takes Jack spiraling down.

The water rushes up, and Jack keeps his mouth closed and his lungs open. The stone flooding him with air. Jack keeps hold of Kent, trusting Kent to keep him safe, to lead him to his family.

They might not have a solution for Kent leaving Nominingue yet, but Kent’s found a way to bring Jack further into his life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all folks--thank you to ever who's read along! :)


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